Apartments or houses?

It mostly depends on the game I'm playing or the stage of the game. My sims don't usually stay on one lot their entire lives. I have a couple game saves where my sim lives in the city and has no plan on leaving the city. With other game saves, especially if I'm not using money cheats, which I do less and less since it's so easy to earn money, I'll start a sim in a cheap apartment until they have enough to build more than a starter home. They will then move to a house or have a house built (I like building). If I do a rags to riches game, then I always start on a home style lot that is vacant.

One thing I love about TS4 is that you are not stuck to one world!!