My opinion would change quite immensely if a lot of these fake houses and structures (especially things like businesses and town halls) served a rabbit hole-type function as they do in TS3. We have malls, government offices, military bases (which make no sense as to why they're useless, since we have a military career with Strangerville), restaurants, gas stations--all serving no function other than being decorative. Even structures major to a game's region, and by my interpretation, major landmarks/tourist spots, such as the covered bridge in Brindeton Bay are inaccessible and unusable.
However, again, I'm very curious as to how the land these "shell buildings" as I call them are treated in the code. Many of the shell and rabbit hole structures that exist in the game and are completely useless otherwise do show up in Build Buy when bb.showhidden objects and bb.liveeditobjects are active. So, could the lots these shell buildings sit on be a special lot type we can't use?