When Do You Decide It's Time For Your Sims To Downsize?

5 options

1. parents stay in the big house and the extra rooms are just guest rooms or get made into hobby rooms or whatnot

2.parents move out instead leaving the big house to next generation

3. the whole family continues to live together and no one moves out, especially with for rent I foresee this becoming more possible than ever

4. the rooms are given to siblings who were living in smaller rooms

5. whoever stays there dies tragically leaving room for whole new households

I don't make my buildings smaller cause I also don't make them bigger for family

except i might add or delete basement

I have always understood the game, (from sims1 era), to be you start a family, and then you edit the house to accommodate. Entire point of game- end of story. It's a life simulation/building game

Now with Sims 4, it had added a whole level of complexity. I think you can do anything you want, which is nice to explore with different families all the possibilities, but since I play with death turned off, my game play strategies are:

Singles start in apartments once they marry they get a small house, then bigger and bigger, and nicer if they are climbing up their career ladder.
I batch send all young adults to college and they usually go to the university all together, or they will never get through.
Usually all used to move to EverGreen Harbor, a town I made just like Williamsburg Brooklyn, with a bunch of live work industrial loft buildings, and roommate situations. Recently I have branched out to other worlds, and even added Real World Houses for added intensity and those are meant to be temporary.

Only ticket out of this as a young adult in my gameplay style is to get married, and buy a house, move into an apartment, move back to their parents, and/or live in the apartment above their business. The big expensive homes I have to fill up with maximum amount of sims, 8, just to make ends meet. Families with business, all the sims we can have on hand for the business is helpful.

The new pack Is a game changer for me, as it offers me new resolutions for gameplay strategy. I already have a lot of multi-family units homes in game, but I loath to play in them because the lock door system doesn't work that well.
At the moment I used it as place savers, for parents who had all their kids move out, (I like imagine retired), or for sims I don't like to play as but I want them in my game as npc, but don't want to lose them in the household library,(game sometimes deletes them).

I love the new For Rent pack system, as I call finally use these lots with official game play. I love that the older sims can retire on their property as well. It's a nice touch.

In your case, you tell the story you want. I see the lot is big but I don't know if it's expensive. You can downsize if you like, you can move, with the new system you can rent rooms, even b&b. What I usually do if it's a nice house, I bring back the kids. It could be the kids come back to help the elderly parents, especially if they want to retire. Maybe play the legacy game and death just happens.

If no one is in the house when they die, no one in the family get the house or household income. It's kind of a waste if you look at it programatically. There should really be an update for that. I also found it nicer to stay in one house and build and build upon it, then keep moving. Which I do also quite a lot. It's your sandbox- do what you want.

I haven't done it yet, but this is my plan for things like that.
The parents will keep the house until they pass on, and most of their children will move out to live on their own. However, the one child that I choose as an heir, will move back with their parents. They will have a spouse, and more children then their siblings. The parents won't have to take care of their grandchildren, unless they want to, and may travel in their retirement.
The heirs will ultimately keep the house, because that way it stays in the family, and it will pass down through the generations. Their siblings may have one kids, or no kids to keep the population from getting too nerfed, but they will have their own places to live in.
I don't want to move any parents once they become elders, because I feel like they should keep their house until they pass on, but that way they can spend time with any family before they do, and leave the house to their heirs.

I found myself contemplating the same thing!

I've decided that I'm too attached to the family home to part with it, so I'm going to keep the parents of my sim family there and the kids can move out into their own residences. That way I can still visit the family home on the holidays and look back at how I decorated the kids' bedrooms and stuff. There is something sweet about revisiting a childhood home! However, once a sim passes on, I like to be present so I can snatch up the tombstone...so I'll likely have them move into one of their children's new family homes in an in-law suite to spend the remainder of their lives close to family :)

"LeucosiaX;c-18332731" wrote:
Singles start in apartments once they marry they get a small house, then bigger and bigger, and nicer if they are climbing up their career ladder.

This is how my sim self started off. He arrived in San MyShuno at the end of the 1970's and lived in the Jasmine Suites apartment block. When he married his first wife Liberty Lee and he stayed in that apartment block until his house was built in Newcrest in 1980. He built his house with Liberty and her father and moved to his new house in Newcrest in 1980 when the toddlers were ready to age up. Twelve of his children have passed through this house and currently he is raising three of those twelve children from his third marriage which is still going strong.

Depends on the family, sometimes I use the potion of youth and let the parents have more kids when the main heir has moved out, I just leave them with the younger siblings so the house can stay in the family, or the rare occasion I may have them gather everything that is important and move somewhere different from what they have known their whole lives. Though maybe now I'll have more parents just move into apartments who knows.

Back again.
Another idea I have to keep the house in the family is to maybe have a Sim from the family become a Vampire. A bit of a supernatural touch, but it would keep the house in the family, and whether the vampire line is the heir line or not, it would still belong in the family.

I usually have an heir live with or move back in with the parents. The elders help with the grandkids and are usually included in a lot of activities. I try to send them out to dinners with their other children as well or have group events for them. Recently an elder sim died during a family reunion for her when I'd had the old age death notice for her. It was kind of like all of her family gathered around her to say goodbye.

I have such a large rotation that there can be exceptions. I don't have a lot of elders living completely alone. Someone lives with them and inherits the house. I've used cheats like motherlode and I've sent inheritances with young adults who move out. If they add wills, I'd obviously use those. The non-heirs for the house usually get some simoleons.

"Brd709;d-1011993" wrote:
The last of my sim self's daughter Ayla's children moved out of the family home today for University and now it's just Ayla and Maxwell living in a large four bedroom house in Brindleton Bay. Here is their house below:

https://i.imgur.com/kg1UL58.png

My current save is set in the year 2000 and Ayla moved in there with her husband when she married him in 1985. Maxwell was living there before he met Ayla so he has been living there the longest.

When all the kids move out do you stay in their childhood home or do their parents move to somewhere smaller or do you renovate the space so it isn't so large?

Erik's parents never had a chance to decide. I wasn't actively playing them when the four eldest of their five kids moved to Wyvern Hall in Britechester. Then they all moved in with Erik and from there, slowly peeled away. Both of their parents died. But I have to say, since Joseph and Louise moved into The Cantrell House which was their Legacy house, since he inherited it from his granduncle, who built the place long ago, I didn't see them moving. Actually, I expected Adrian would continue to live there, but he wasn't quite a YA and seemed rather lost. He moved in with Aaron and Joey, so far two devout Bachelors. LOL Between the second (Erik) and fourth children (Brianna), their parents had eleven grandchildren.