by Randor20
I agree, that buildings are not nearly as important in the last round, so buying houses/mountains can be a good strategy, if there are cheap spots available. Not so sure about the expensive ones, though maybe them too since that'll probably also hurt the income of the other players a bit (just make sure it matters to them - they might already be over their cash limit).If you pick the grossier it might look a bit different, if one of "your" buildings come up, and you have room for the extra cash. A church might be handy to defend your area or a prison to help win those last VP duels (it uses up two cowboys so not a gain in firepower, but you get some points for cash while having the same for future duels - and the house might make it only a few $).
Also if you have room for the extra income, then you might want to use the cowboys for something else. Like picking duels with the leading player robing his buildings :). If you can steal 10-12$ at a place, that gives you 2 points for a cowboy. Also you have not spend money to buy a plot so close to 3 points - and you have taken some from an opponent (again assuming you have room for the extra cash to buy points for, so mostly for characters 1-3 - and it is more of a risk in case he defends it).
It also depends on wheather or not you have unbuild plots left from previous rounds, as they give you no points if not build on (and then you would effectively have wasted a cowboy getting that land not to mention the $).