For Rent Residential Rental Preparation Thread

Here's some of my projects:

One lot will have a gallery with easels and other art studio items for imagined art classes. With the street sale wall object, it might be possible to create a art shop where random renters will paint and sell. I think the sim selling it must be in the same household (unit) as the creator, but for an exhibition it will work fine to use random works without owning the items. If a well skilled painting artist lives on the lot, he can invite a group (club) to the studio to mentor them (and take the paintings afterwards...)

One lot will have an indoor market with sales tables and fitting decor, perhaps. Any rental unit should be able to use the sales table(s), and if it is possible to run a backyard sale in a "common unit", this should also attract a few customers. Sales tables can be used on residential lots indor, but the door must be an Arch, instead of a regular Door.

One lot will have a café on ground level. I might add the barista furniture for the atmosphere, but also add a couple coffee machines for sims to serve themselves. Sims renting units (or visitors, even) can cook group meals and place those in one of those cake counter displays. Sims entering the café can then grab a free serving and a cup of coffee, to make it feel like a working café. Hopefully some renters will stop by, or my visiting sim can invite a few friends. I assume that sims not living on the lot can still visit sections of it. If visitors can not access the common unit without visiting someone who lives there, I will simply try with the ground floor not marked as a unit at all. Should work somehow :)

I have many finer homes with Servants. Anything from just one butler (live-in, not from the Vintage pack), to a small group including Butler, Cook, Maid etc. I will now let the servants have their own unit. Not quite sure how it will work, but I can switch between active units by first playing the servant preparing/serving a meal, then switch to the noble family arranging their party. Or - if the servant resides with someone, the servant(s) can be joining the lordship household during the event. By putting servants in their own unit, I will free up those 8 sims slots, which will allow for more kids or a couple mini dogs...

Some of my lots have large sections for various purposes. The largest is my royal palace which is way too big to play. Kids need 1 hr to walk from their room to the imaginary school bus. Toddlers take half a day to crawl down all the stairs... I will now see how it works with units. The royal family has a private section on 3rd floor where they spend quite some time. Making that one unit will help keeping them there without the need of locking doors. Then there is the official section on ground floor, incl Monarch's office, press room section, throne room and a few formal venues intended for events. All these official rooms might be the "common unit", or not tagged at all, if that will be less attractive to everyone on the lot. Finally the servants can get a joint servants unit, meaning they will no longer be roaming about, but appear as they are called for. I think it will be easier playing the palace when those living there will be "locked" into each their "rental units". In addition there is a "suite" that could also be a unit - stately guests and other stays there temporarily. The Landlord (Monarch) would just need to "throw an event" to be joined by the guest(s).

I'm also pondering on adding residential units on top of all my Recreation Centers. I know the centers will be hardly be visited by NPCs, but I mostly use them for my actively played household anyway, and it is not a catastrophe if the place feels empty.

More to come, surely... :)

I think we will need to wait and see how community type objects can be used on the residential rental lots. I don't think we'll be able to run restaurants and such, but maybe a sort of community kitchen may work. On the plus side, you could make lots of money selling food on the lot if the apartments don't have any kitchens. So far I have started building an apartment complex on the large empty lot in Del Sol Valley and I plan to include shared amenities like a pool, gym, laundry room, a dance studio and an arts and crafts and play room. There will also be a shared roof terrace.

"crocobaura;c-18328696" wrote:
I think we will need to wait and see how community type objects can be used on the residential rental lots. I don't think we'll be able to run restaurants and such, but maybe a sort of community kitchen may work. On the plus side, you could make lots of money selling food on the lot if the apartments don't have any kitchens. So far I have started building an apartment complex on the large empty lot in Del Sol Valley and I plan to include shared amenities like a pool, gym, laundry room, a dance studio and an arts and crafts and play room. There will also be a shared roof terrace.

I already have combined lots like suggested above, a mix of community and residential do work in most cases, for the active visitors. The kind of lots where the point would be a crowd of NPCs would not work. And, those objects will not attract NPCs at all because the lot is not tagged accordingly.

I have a few cc items that allow my sim to purchase stuff like magazines, perfumes, cakes, food etc on any lot, even at home. So they will help creating a store on a residential rental lot, I think. As long as my sims are allowed to visit that lot, they can also spend time at the ground level community lot. But yes, we'll soon know a bit more.

Yep, one of the things I've noticed in the trailer is one apartment had food stalls outside, and these food stalls were filled with sims. I don't know if it still means our sims have to hire vendors or if they come automatically or if there is a setting for property owners to have vendors come automatically...

Plus I have also done such projects. For example, I added café to the shared area, I added boba tea stand, I even added a bar in some of the places.

Sorry to see my thread was merged with this thread - its intention was to focus on community lot features combined with rentals, not the residential renal specifically. That's a different approach, but hey-ho, life goes on...

Another project of mine - sorry it seems a bit off topic as I'm not building it, just thinking of doing it... Larger farms will have one or two small houses for rent, intended for workers to help with the crop. If all plants are grown either on "shared unit" (if outdoor rooms can be assigned to a unit) or on ground not in any unit, tenants should be able to weed, water and evolve, while the landlord will be the one harvesting/selling. Perhaps there will be small plot where tenants can grow their own stuff, or they can be allowed harvesting one plant per day etc. It should be quit easy to administrate and the work could mean lower rent. It all depends on who has access to what area etc.

I posted my townhouse shell and also a version with a decorated model unit to the gallery: "Modern Townhouses - Shell" and "Modern Townhouses - Model." I figure I can re-post them after the gallery is updated to include the Residential Rental lot type.

Alright, I announced earlier that I would turn Vlad's mansion into a residential rental for vampire households, and started working on that a couple of days ago. This is what I have so far:

Shared space + ground floor apartment
https://abload.de/img/01sharedspacegroundfl6lf46.jpg
The shared space consists of the entrance corridor, the former living room and the room with the stone floor where the stairs leading into the basement used to be. The latter is now the laundry room for the entire house. The basement stairs were moved to the entrance area, which will also get a planter box for a plasma fruit tree and a juice fizzing station for all tenants to use. This is because I'm using a mod that makes plasma juice an effective alternative for quenching vampires' thirst. The mailbox will go in the empty area to the right of the front door. I'm currently thinking about what else to add.

The ground floor apartment (outlined in blue) will be home to a female medium and her child sister. The adult is not a vampire, but the child is, which explains why her room doesn't have windows. I've never played with vampire children before because knowing TS4, they won't have any actual vampire powers or weaknesses before becoming teens, but maybe there's a mod for that.

The basement apartment ...
https://abload.de/img/02basementapt76eu5.jpg
... is meant to be a crypt of sorts, for an attractive male vampire obsessed with Lara Croft and archaeology. His human maid, who is based on a former co-worker I couldn't stand, does his chores and even lets him drink her blood because she's in love with him, but he's just using her while waiting for Lara to come raid his tomb.

The upper floor apartment (outlined in green) ...
https://abload.de/img/03upperaptdkecu.jpg
... doesn't have a proper floor plan or furniture at the moment because I don't know who is going to live there yet – probably a bigger vampire family to contrast the smaller ones in the other apartments. Or someone with a hobby that requires a lot of space. There's certainly enough room for either.

The two-story attic apartment (outlined in purple) ...
https://abload.de/img/04atticaptgardend1ep7.jpg
https://abload.de/img/05atticaptxndew.jpg
... belongs to a single male vampire-witch hybrid, the only future tenant who already exists as a played sim in my game as I'm writing this. He's currently living with another vampire in Newcrest, but never really felt at home there. As you can see, the sheltered roof area has a garden where yet another plasma fruit tree will be planted among other things, and this will be a shared space, too.

And now I'm going to stop building for today, because it has driven me nearly insane once again.

For some reason thought this was named something else and couldn't find it anyways, we are so close but still too far so I opened ts2 to see if we could make our own apartments because I never had. I found a tutorial and it had the cheat in it I didn't know we had so I made something that I may try to recreate now when for rent comes out.

I is weird we need a cheat since the door is in build mode whatever, anyhow it said what to include and was clear enough when I realized I had the wrong door I changed it back to fix that and when I moved in I got to click on the unit I wanted then everything disappeared. I'm assuming that's what they meant it'll be like in for rent.

"RedDestiny92;c-18330033" wrote:
For some reason thought this was named something else and couldn't find it anyways, we are so close but still too far so I opened ts2 to see if we could make our own apartments because I never had. I found a tutorial and it had the cheat in it I didn't know we had so I made something that I may try to recreate now when for rent comes out.

I is weird we need a cheat since the door is in build mode whatever, anyhow it said what to include and was clear enough when I realized I had the wrong door I changed it back to fix that and when I moved in I got to click on the unit I wanted then everything disappeared. I'm assuming that's what they meant it'll be like in for rent.

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/6UvttADh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/HeRltQ3h.jpg

Glad you found this thread!

Oh hey! An experienced TS2 apartment builder here! I might go somewhat technical here, but if you'd like, bear with me.
Yup, most lot type conversations require that special cheat. When you make a brand new lot, you have to either choose residential or commercial. Then you have to build it ready and then change it. Residential lots can be made into dorms and apartments, commercial lots can be made into hotels.
The reason I guess is strict coding, which may also be the reason why most of the build tools are disabled (and the cloning tool in dorms too for some reason). Though I'm not an expert on the exact coding.
One thing The Sims 2 did is using the lot you built/placed as a base, a template to the sublots: the hidden copies of the apartment lot the game would make for each family moved in. That is why you can't rename apartments that already have a family in it, why everything gets wiped and get reset back to the state it was in the beginning, and why it is highly inadvisable to have your last sim die in an apartment. Plus, it is also a reason why it is advisable to build apartments on flat terrain and never make beach apartments. Here's a post I have made about it in a different thread (under spoilers).
Both posts are in The Sims 2 Discoveries thread.

"EgonVM;c-18224200" wrote:
Today the test lands have opened up!

So, some fun things to share. And I warn you, it's picture heavy.

I have seen places that tell that you shouldn't rezone a beach lot into an apartment lot as you will have issues with the lot. So, I tried it out to see what issues there are. And...



The terrain goes into the level of the ocean terrain, causing floating ocean and the apartment being in the hole. And it only applies to apartment sub-lots (the one you rezone is apartment base-lot), meaning that if you move your sims out and then take a look, that issue isn't there.
It happens most often when you build your apartment on a very mountainous terrain (picture example below).


There is one way you can solve it: move the lot in the neighborhood screen. However, do be warned that you will have to do that every time you move a new family into the apartment. So I still wouldn't recommend rezoning a beach lot into an apartment base lot.

But if you don't mind, good news is that you can still swim in the waters. :)

"EgonVM;c-18224513" wrote:

"Ellupelluellu;c-18224229" wrote:
@EgonVM , in case you are curious, here is more info , by late Mootilda , about beach/uneven terrain apartments :)
https://modthesims.info/t/302405

That's interesting... So, when an apartment sublot is created, it gets lowered to the lowest point of the base-lot.
This post is long and picture heavy, so I'll put all that under spoilers.

Spoiler

So, interested, I went ahead and dug the deepest hole possible near an apartment to make it sink.


After changing the lot type and moving sims in, the result is... nothing...


So then. Let's make the hole larger. And make it more useable! Aren't I a great builder?


This is fun! And it will leave behind a large hole temporarily when moved!


The result again is nothing...


But the last plan was to move out the family and move the lot on the higher ground. After moving the family in, I got the results I wanted!


The moral of the story. The apartments won't sink below the sea level. That's because first the apartment was on the flat ground near sea level and this happened on the higher ground.
But let's repeat the one small hole experiment on the higher ground. The result: nothing.


So, to have this bug happen, you need to have a lot of lower ground. One small hole doesn't make it happen.

So yeah, only one certain door is allowed and only one entrance to a unit is allowed. Should you have multiple entrances, the game will literally warn you that there's an invalid apartment and suggests you to rezone the lot back and correct the mistake. Plus players must be careful over using fences sims can step over, as fencing something off can make it into a shared space.

So yeah, unless you are using creative workarounds (which I'm a little afraid to use), you must be careful when building apartments in The Sims 2.

The Sims 4 promises to bring apartment building without cheats and more relaxed units. We'll see how it'll look like when the pack releases...

About the other units.
Yes, everything in other units disappear. They are not hidden (as going into build/buy mode won't reveal them like in dorms), but simply not there. However, when your sim visits another unit, the objects will fade into existence room by room (with the room your sim is entering being revealed first), suggesting to me that the game is loading the objects in the unit without a loading screen. Once all your sims have exited the unit, it will unload, becoming hidden again. Your home unit will always be seen and should another sim in your family visit a different unit, that one will be shown too.
What we understand is that in The Sims 4, visiting another unit will trigger a loading screen and only one unit can be active at the time. Though one benefit I see there is that sims living there will be doing something, not standing near the front door as if everyone was expecting your sim.

Whoops... That post went long. And I'm planning to do another big showcase soon too, so yay, more big posts coming!