The Sims 4: For Rent - Tips For Building A Rental Apartment

In The Sims 4: For Rent, you can build your own rental buildings. With the new Residential Rental lot type, any lot can become up to six individually rented units. These can be separate houses, townhouses, or apartments. The choice is yours.

Everything You Need To Know Before Buying The Sims 4: For Rent

Here's a breakdown of all the features in The Sims 4: For Rent.

If your Sim owns the lot, you can also choose to live on a second plot or reside within one of the units as a live-in landlord. No matter which direction you choose, here are some tips that will help you build the perfect rental homes.

10 Know The Differences Between Rental And Residential Rental

General rental units already exist, but these are holiday rentals, designed to be visited for short periods of time. They generally contain limited facilities and Sims can only visit them if they already have an existing home lot elsewhere.

Residential Rentals are occupied by Sims over a longer period of time and players can set the rent, add rules for tenants to follow, and customise the entire building.

A Residential Rental building can be owned by any Sim, and they will become the landlord and collect rent from any units occupied by other Sims. Landlords are also responsible for fixing issues in the units, such as broken items or electricity outages. If you do not purchase the building, a Sim landlord will be assigned by the game.

9 Look At Different Building Types

The units on Residential Rentals are completely customisable, so you can choose from many types of houses. Here are a few ideas:

• A small cul-de sac of 1-2 bedroom homes
• A set of walk-up apartments
• A tall apartment complex
• A row of town houses
• A large multi-bedroom home with private bedrooms and shared living space
• A large home with a garage type space converted into a studio apartment
• A handful of different sized homes for a multi-generation legacy family

Whichever idea suits you best, the lots in Tomarang are flexible enough to allow different combinations, and for a truly unique multi-occupancy world, Newcrest is ideal.

8 Consider The World And Its Lots

Each world in the game has a different style. You can use the existing lots as well as the non-functional scenic lots to get some ideas for styles to follow. All livable pre-built regular residential lots can also be edited and turned into multiple-occupancy homes.

If you go into build buy mode from the world map you can change the lot type of any empty residential lot and designate it as a rental. You just need to mark out the units and shared spaces as required.

Even scenery is generally crafted with items available in the build buy catalogue, especially if you enable environmental and hidden items cheats. Use these to create something that perfectly blends in.

7 Remove The Six Unit Cap On Residential Rental Lots

If you want to remove the current limit of six units per Residential Rental lot, then after enabling testing cheats, you can use the following cheat code:

bb.increaserentalunitcap on

This will allow you to designate more than six units per lot. If you want to reverse this, just replace the word on with off to remove the increase. However, it should be noted that separating out rental units can make the frame rate and performance of your game take a huge hit, so do this at your own risk.

The 99 rental units per save file hard limit will still apply regardless of if the unit cap is removed.

6 Use Floor Plans To Help Layout Your Build

There are a huge number of floorplans and floorplan websites online and these can be incredibly helpful for working out house plans. They offer ideas on how to arrange different sizes houses, and also provide inspiration for exteriors.

10 Tips For Building Exteriors In The Sims 4

Building exteriors in The Sims 4 can be difficult with all the options available. Here, you can learn some helpful tips for your next exterior build.

Searching for house plans is a great way to learn to build, as they provide a good frame work for a basic home layout which you can easily customise if you wish.

5 Keep In Mind The Unit Rating Criteria

When building, it's also worth taking note of the Unit Rating criteria. You'll need to use the parameters of unit size, number of amenities, and decor items to help boost the unit rating of your build.

You can find out how to improve your unit rating in our handy guide.

The furniture you add is as important as the build, since any non-player Sims who move in will not bring furniture. You'll need to provide for all their needs if you are to see them thrive. This will help keep them happy and keep your rental cap high. It's a win all round.

4 Try To Keep The Lot Size Above 75 Tiles

If a unit is 76 tiles to 150 tiles in size it is classed as a medium size and this helps it gain a higher rating. Unless you are looking at having a home that rents out small rooms, there's no good reason to take the hit of going below 76 tiles.

This is especially true since a home smaller than this is difficult to fit the essentials into. When it comes to renting, tiny homes are best left alone. A 76 tile unit is still small in terms of space it takes up on a lot, especially if you build on more than one storey, but it's much more flexible and profitable than going smaller.

3 Plan For Separate Rooms When Possible

Even in small houses keeping the bathroom and bedroom seperate helps a lot with both house value and also how easy it is to play in. Sims get very embarassed constantly if bathrooms are left open, and studio apartments may be fine for a solo Sim, they can also lead to some negative debuffs pretty easily.

Neither space has to be huge but the separation will od wonders for the health and wellbeing of the occupants, something they will thank you for.

2 Consider Adding Shared Areas

A huge part of the experience of rentals is the shared community experiences the game has added. You can have a pool party and a community pot luck social event, but you'll need a place to host them. Building a shared space able to host these events is a fantastic way to facilitate good Sim relationships.

For those with less wholesome interests, shared areas can also allow your evil and mischievious Sims easier access to places where they can spy on their neighbours and uncover some juicy gossip.

1 Don't Seperate Out Units Until You Are Done Building

You don't have to seperate out units until you've finished your entire build, and I recommend that you don't. Adding the separation markers can make the game stutter, so it's much easier to build without them on. They also leave visible lines across the build when in build mode, which again is something you can live without when building.

After the build is done units can be assigned by simply clicking each room and choosing if it's shared space or which unit it belongs to. You can also choose any lot trait or challenges at this time.

The Sims 4: For Rent - How To Complete The Seeker of Secrets Aspiration

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