Okay, so here is my issue now....>.> haha
basically i downloaded a two family house for the sims 3, and the elevation was off, but i was able to fix that. NOW, it IS two ''separate'' homes, which i just merged two families, but it will NOT allow me to use one of the homes....one home is as normal, and the one on the other side is just totally in black, as if you were viewing a neighbors home. they are on the same lot...

so if im not being clear...it is ONE compound with TWO separate sides which are conjoined by a walkway. they each have all of the amenities of a house. it will let me edit the entire home(s) in build/buy mode, but when i get to live mode, half of it is totally unusable....any suggestions?

ive already tried having one of the families ''move'' to the other side, and that won't work...1

If the interior of the other structure is completely black on the interior, activate buydebug and look for a hidden room marker (a silver colored ball). If you see any of those, remove them all. You might want to check the doors to the build also, they may have been designated as NPC doors and won't work properly for your active household. The easiest thing to do is replace the ones your Sims can't use.

testingcheatsenabled true > buydebug on > look for and remove any spheres > buydebug off

That's all I can think of, hope you are able to use your lot soon.

Igazor's post reminded me about the public room markers. You would also have no need for those on a regular residential lot, they can be removed.

This is what a LN style "apartment" is, one usable unit and the rest blacked out for NPC service sims to hibernate into as an alternative for going off the map as they would in worlds without these. The only difference is that its orientation is side-by-side instead of a highrise like most of them in a world like Bridgeport would be. If you destroy the hidden/public room markers, then you will have one big double sized unit on the lot, but still only usable by one household.

You could use creative door locking to keep one half of a large household on one side of the lot and one half on the other, but for purposes of finances and a few other things, it will still be one big household, all the refrigerators' contents will be the same, etc. There is a rich history here with the two types of TS3 apartments (the other coming from Uni) -- EA listened to what players wanted and gave us the exact opposite in each case.