The most recent thing I did was start with seven unrelated sims, haha. Two sets of couples came out of that, and one married someone I added in specifically for him. The other two are single to this day.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "house or nothing." I usually start with an empty lot, and design the house myself.
Through adding people in manually and my sims having tons of kids, by the time I get bored with a save I'll usually have at least half of the world populated solely by sims I've caused the creation of, in one way or another.