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Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 6:46 AM
Default what do you do when your sim needs a house?
I thought it would be nice to know what some of you do when your sims need a new house. Whether they need something bigger or just something a little nicer, or maybe it's their first house altogether, I'd love to hear how you go about getting your sims a house. Do you just buy a house that's already built and throw your sims in it, or maybe build your own completely from scratch? Personally I love moving my sims into the premade houses, and then if I ever decide I need something nicer or bigger I love trying to remodel them instead of just looking for something else.

For example I love buying one of the cheapest houses in town, but then slowly expand them over time to be bigger and nicer houses. I just love trying to remodel the existing houses because I seem to suck when it comes to ideas for creating my own, yet when I already have something to work with I really get into the building process and ideas usually come pretty easily. The most recent house I did was the one called Shotgun Style in Sunset Valley. I turned it into a 5 bedroom and 3 bathroom house that has two main floors plus a basement. I also left most of that big space on the left side of the lot, and turned it into a big playground for my children. It isn't anything really spectacular or over the top, but when compared to the way the house used to be it is definitely much bigger and much nicer.
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Test Subject
#2 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 4:37 PM
I suck at building, so I usually buy a premade house/apartment/thing and then edit the furnishings to fit my Sims.
Scholar
#3 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 4:40 PM
I usually just send them to a new house; most of my towns already have many empty houses. If no house is available, I just built one
Mad Poster
#4 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 5:00 PM
While I played TS3, I had little to no interest in building houses (I do like it in TS2, though), so if my simmies needed a new house, I would just move them to a premade house, and maybe change some of the furniture.
Lab Assistant
#5 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 5:01 PM
Sometimes I move a family to the "next best thing," especially if they're going from a starter home to something with a lot more land (for a pool, outdoor park, whatever), but if I really love the look of the house or if I feel it's particularly well lived-in, I'll make remodeling tweaks, little by little. The last time that happened, though, it was a family of supernaturals with excessive lifespans so I kept needing more room. By the time I was done doing what I wanted to do with that family (a hybrid of every supernatural type), the house was 3 stories in height, plus 2 levels of basements, including fully furnished basement "apartments." I had to make sure any parties happened on the main level because the stairs kept getting so crowded.

I've only started a few houses from scratch in my play-throughs (and usually then I'm trying to mimic the space of someplace I've lived personally). I prefer to let the much better architects give me a "base structure" to work with and go from there if I remodel.
Alchemist
#6 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 7:21 PM
I love factory living, so if there isn't a suitable empty factory or warehouse - residential or community lot - in the neighborhood, then I build one myself. The size depends on the family size and when more room is needed, I either add it or move to a new bigger one. I never ever use any of the normal, prebuild homes because I don't like them and I would get bored under five minutes. I tend to avoid the two biggest lot sizes but I always have to have enough yard space for two stall horse barn. My sim have two immortal horses that live with each generation. Really big houses aren't needed, though, because each generation usually gets their own home.
Scholar
#7 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 8:05 PM
All of the options. I don't like my sims to live in mansions (I bulldoze anything I find in my neighborhood that's over 100K and remodel everything that's over 70K to be under 60K). If the family gets too big to manage in a small house with extra beds, I either place a premade or custom house or build one to spec. I also want my towns to be denser than EA standard so I try to place lots between the lots the world arrived with.

My remodeling principles: EA loves to make houses with weirdly-shaped rooms, long narrow windy halls, big living areas with. way too many expensive couches and living chairs. They also tend to leave out fire alarms. I've disabled the burglar so I don't need those, but fire alarms seem pretty basic. I take those large rooms and squiggly hallways and remodel them to have more, smaller, more normal-shaped rooms, and I make sure there are plenty of bunkbeds and a crib or three and maybe a couple-few pet beds and dishes and a box of pet toys as well as skilling toys for children and some skilling toys for adults. I remove all parking spaces, cars, and pools because I hate them.In their place, my sims get little gardens and a it of outdoor skilling and living, sometimes including a pond. All pools in my towns are public pools. Replacing some build objects with cute inexpensive custom ones completes the "cheaper-less nonsense-more living space" project.

I apply similar principles to lots I download.

When I build for my sims, I give them houses that follow the same principles, and I style them according to a handful of styles I am cultivating: Spanish Revival, Early 20th Cedntury Berkeley-style Weird Little Stucco Bungalows, Eichler-ish and flat-top little midcentury suburban shanties, Craftsman-Prairie-Mission houses (usually medium size), Jigsaw Gothic (a down-market version of Victorian/Queen Anne/etc). Oh, and Cinder-Block Urban Boxes and Shotgun Shacks. In Sims 2 I always built these as apartments with modded sops involved, but I can't do that in Sims 3. I have been coming around to the idea I might make some use of Sims 3 apartments after all, but I'm not sure how yet.
Lab Assistant
#8 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 8:52 PM
it depends on how much I feel like building. if I do feel like building I'll go hunt down house plans with the number of bedrooms I need (+ one or two more, depending on whether or not the family is gonna grow). I usually only build until I've got the walls, roof, and necessities finished and then I go back to playing and slowly finish the house over time. if I don't feel like building I'll just buy my sims a premade home and renovate, get rid of all the ugly decor and furniture, resize rooms, new terrain paint. I don't always do all of that, it depends on how bad the house is and how much effort I feel like making.

my favorite remodel so far was when a sim couple I was playing in riverview ended up with a new cat and a baby when they were still living in a tiny starter home. they had so much other crap already taking up space I couldn't even figure out where to put the crib so I went house hunting. picked a really ugly two story house right across from the school that had a layout I felt I could work with. it's actually still not finished, despite the fact that their daughter is now a child and they've even got a second baby, but I pretty much deleted everything in the house and redid rooms from scratch. more recently I got rid of some of the trees (so that raking in the fall is less of a pain), redid both the front and back yards, built one of my sims a little gardening shack, and FINALLY redid that ugly exterior. there's still some work that needs to be done on some of the rooms, but overall it looks a million times better than when my sims first moved in.

my current plan is to build a bunch of homes of different sizes and stuff so that in the future I don't have to stop gameplay to go find the perfect house plans and build or deal with ugly EA homes when I'm not in a remodeling mood. instead I'll be able to just plop down a house that I already know I'll like and keep playing.
Top Secret Researcher
#9 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 9:39 PM
Some worlds have nice looking houses that are unplayable.
Some worlds have playable houses that a small sim family can't afford at the start of the game.
Most sim houses have no provisions at all (attic or a basement) to put things like sculpting stations, science stations, alchemy stations and so on.
My buildings are ugly but utilitarian.
Sometimes I buy a nice house, but add a basement off to the side.
Sometimes I buy a nice house, but add an office on an empty lot for all the skill tools.
Scholar
#10 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 11:36 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Emmett Brown
Some worlds have nice looking houses that are unplayable.

Which worlds are those?
Lab Assistant
#11 Old 21st Apr 2016 at 11:43 PM
I try to either build things myself or modify a house I download.

99% of the time it winds up looking absolutely ridiculous.
Mad Poster
#12 Old 22nd Apr 2016 at 5:14 AM
I have a set red duplex houses from simsample's Jericho, that I re-modeled so both parts are playable. I really love those houses, as they are so normal and middle class. I use the apartment mod to have two families living in the same house. These, I use the most. Other than that, I usually have some houses that fit the world in my house bin, which I put down as needed. Except for farms, those I usually end up building from scratch so they are cheap enough.
Top Secret Researcher
#13 Old 22nd Apr 2016 at 6:01 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Lord St.Croix
Which worlds are those?


I specifically recall that the Goth house is too cramped in Sunset valley for sims to interact. Some of the CC houses, while very pretty, are also too cramped and imho, not really playable.
Forum Resident
#14 Old 22nd Apr 2016 at 6:58 AM
I have lots of trouble building aesthetically pleasing houses, so I stick with premade ones and edit them as needed. I usually get rid of all the furniture straight after moving in and adjust the interior as needed (i.e. turning a large room into two smaller rooms, replacing a regular staircase with a spiral staircase, etc.) ... then I redecorate the house completely.

I'm playing a household with one sim right now, and she lives in an absolutely tiny 1bed/1bath house. When she makes enough money, she'll be moving into a house with space for an office (so probably a 2bed/1bath with the second bedroom adjusted for her purposes). I prefer moving over adding onto the exterior a house, as I often end up butchering the original design scheme.

Additionally, roofs are an absolute nightmare.
Rubric Wrangler
#15 Old 22nd Apr 2016 at 2:18 PM
Depends on the family. If they are horse owners I buy the biggest empty lot in town and design my own. Otherwise I usually favour EA houses which I modify, and often will reuse the same few in a town once I find ones I like. They get re-CASTed first thing, since most are not eye-searingly wallpapered enough for my tastes. Once they are suitably bedazzled, then things like proper renovation and furniture replacement will normally happen slowly as money comes in. Typically I will ditch the starter first chance I get, but stay in and renovate the second house extensively over time.

Very rarely I will build a custom house for a family, either because the household is a massive, multigenerational affair which won't fit in EA houses, or if I'm just plain feeling unusually motivated.

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Scholar
#16 Old 22nd Apr 2016 at 3:14 PM Last edited by lucy kemnitzer : 22nd Apr 2016 at 3:33 PM.
The only reason I don't enjoy building in Sims 3 as much as I do in Sims 2 is the mind-numbing lag. Last night I spent more time doing other things than actually building because each category of build item took sooo long to load. I do have a fair amount of custom doors and windows, but not nearly as much as I have in Sims 2, and I need it, because EA doesn't provide all that I need and the EA items make even a little house too expensive for poor sims or if I want to give the sims some extra skilling items. So I do spend more time remodeling than building in Sims 3, because it cuts out a little time.

edit: I mean to say I minimize the game when the category is loading. I can't prove it but I think the category loads faster when I do that also. At least I don't feel as impatient when I'm reading a blog post instead of watching nothing-nothing happening while I'm waiting for the cursor to come alive again.
Test Subject
#17 Old 22nd Apr 2016 at 5:23 PM
When I start a new world, I build twelve houses ranging from shack to palaces. The shack is set to normal residential lot. The rest of the houses are empty inside. This keeps the other inactive Sims out of my houses.

I move my Sim into a shack, they modernize it with indoor plumbing, put in windows, add a kitchen, electrical lights, add a couple of rooms, and put some nice furniture in it as they can afford it. Then they save up for the next lot which is a cabin, sell their old house and buy the next one. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the houses. Buy the time they move into their final house, I have about a month of game play left before the world starts having problems. Then it is time to start again in a different world.
Lab Assistant
#18 Old 22nd Apr 2016 at 6:14 PM
Of course, every neighborhood I make from scratch, I always have someone living in a lot that just has a fridge CASted to look rusty and old, the buydebug bed made out of garbage, an outhouse, and some junk piles, but I don't think I've ever had my Sims living there...
Top Secret Researcher
#19 Old 23rd Apr 2016 at 12:19 AM
I have a set of houses that I downloaded and adore and depending on what type of family I play, I use one of them, maybe place a few of the others in the world as well.
Legacy houses get expanded and redecorated depending on the current generation's wishes and wallet size. I use the Banking Mod to borrow money if the family grew faster than the wallet of the bread maker(s) but I do pay it back.
Generally, I try to play as close to life as possible when it comes to money. That means, my non-heirs move out and take money with them. That way, my legacies don't become too rich too fast and sometimes, if there are a lot of kids, they will deplete the new heir's wallet very quickly.
I don't build much, I suck at it and I prefer playing over building but I love decorating based on my and my sim's personalities, color preferences, etc.
Mad Poster
#20 Old 23rd Apr 2016 at 6:59 AM
I've moved my sims onto larger empty lots in my 100 baby challenge in Storybrook and had them start building their own houses over time.They have to earn enough money to be able to afford to pay for their build as they build the house.I might add rentals later as the town gets bigger.I've sometimes had sims live on community lots like the store in Oak Leaf.It was built using my Garden House build and I added rabbit hole rugs to it's basement.I was able to get the homeless family living on a community lot to move into a house later when a starter home got built.
Scholar
Original Poster
#21 Old 26th Apr 2016 at 11:40 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Emmett Brown
I specifically recall that the Goth house is too cramped in Sunset valley for sims to interact. Some of the CC houses, while very pretty, are also too cramped and imho, not really playable.
One that comes to mind for me is the house called Cormorant in Sunset Valley. It's a pretty nice place, but so cramped with all the furniture that it just doesn't seem like a reasonable option for more than 1 or 2 people. The place has a double bed and I believe 2 single beds as the default, and I'm sorry but the place is way too cramped for that many people to live there. I tried living there once with a couple I was working on, and as soon as they had their first child I knew I needed to find a different place. Usually I'll try and remodel a house before deciding to move into a different one, but with that place I wasn't even gonna bother. Maybe it's just me, but the default layout of that house is pretty terrible.
Alchemist
#22 Old 26th Apr 2016 at 12:44 PM
I almost never buy premade houses, even if I tend to build boxes - it's my box, goddamit, and I'm proud of it! It also helps lower sims' funds and adds a bit of difficulty when you start out with only a stove, a fridge, a toilet and the crappiest single bed, all in a concrete box. Like someone else said up there, roofs are the bane of my existence; I can make a decent house, then the roof comes and it looks like someone dropped a wrecking ball on it. Fortunately I don't have to look at it. Kudos to all the great builders who have the patience to make nice roofs!

I'd classify "too expensive" as "non-playable" too. Almost all worlds have quite a few houses with bad floor plans - rooms are either too big or too small for their purpose - and the EA designers try to compensate by filling them with decor, which in turn raises the house's price unnecessarily. This leads to the houses becoming abandoned when their owners move because they can't pay the bills, and no other sims move in because they can't afford a $500,000 house. Cramming 6 of the most expensive paintings in-game (which don't even go together) in the same room in an attempt to be "classy" just makes everything look tacky. So in that respect I try to get rid of useless decor in NPC houses and prefer to build small (20x20) and functional houses instead.

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One Minute Ninja'd
#23 Old 26th Apr 2016 at 1:01 PM
I'm in the non world premade home group as well. I used to build my own whenever needed, but lately I've taken to spotting a custom home somewhere that has a look and feel I like, and then renovating to meet my needs. It usually works out to be faster than building from scratch for me, although I can still put 8 hours into a remodel, especially if I need to add several more bedrooms (I tend towards large households). It still beats the days of work I'd put in if building from scratch.
Site Helper
#24 Old 26th Apr 2016 at 2:38 PM
If a lot I like has a house on it (and if I'm feeling lazy) they get that house. (Although it usually ends up eventually getting remodeled a lot.) Otherwise, I like building. I've got a lot of houses and community lots that I've built if I want to use a pre-made one.

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Lab Assistant
#25 Old 26th Apr 2016 at 6:11 PM
Quote: Originally posted by sweetdevil
I'd classify "too expensive" as "non-playable" too. Almost all worlds have quite a few houses with bad floor plans - rooms are either too big or too small for their purpose - and the EA designers try to compensate by filling them with decor, which in turn raises the house's price unnecessarily. This leads to the houses becoming abandoned when their owners move because they can't pay the bills, and no other sims move in because they can't afford a $500,000 house. Cramming 6 of the most expensive paintings in-game (which don't even go together) in the same room in an attempt to be "classy" just makes everything look tacky. So in that respect I try to get rid of useless decor in NPC houses and prefer to build small (20x20) and functional houses instead.


See, I love the Crumplebottom sisters in Moonlight Falls...but I absolutely despise that fugly, overpriced house they live in.
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