Teleporting not working

I've run into this recently. Last night I found something but I'm not sure what to make of it. I entered the game with my household and I wanted to teleport them to a spot nearby, but not on the lot itself. The command wouldn't even show up in their queue so I tried on the lot. Still nothing. I gave up and had them travel to adjacent lot that was a little closer to where I wanted them to be and figured I'd just use a 'go here'. After they spawned on that lot I thought I'd try one more time to see if the teleport worked and it did. I tried it with another household and the same thing. The command wouldn't work until they used the phone to travel to another lot and then it worked like normal.