More Awesome Than You!

Well EA tells us that it is intended to be that way when most of the furnishing of an appartment disappears when rented but I can't imagine this is true. Why? Simply because of the investments a Sim has to make. Besides paying the weekly rent (which is always extremely high compared to what we get in exchange) he also has to buy all the new furnishing and decoration. At total this is more expensive than buying a regular house! So why the heck should I rent an apartment? It don't make sense that way!
Morover it takes a lot of time to refurnish an apartment which was fully furnished before!
I came to the conclusion that I will play with the premade apartment inhabitants but I won't add new ones.
Intended behavior or a huge bug which EA puts in disguise by saying "it has to be that way" ?
However it is absolutely annoying!

To rent a furnished apartment, turn on debug mode and shift-click on the apartment door in debug mode.  The rent isn't extremely high as far as I can see.  If you edit the lot before you move any sims in, you can add items to the common area, making it unneccessary to add these items to the sim's apartment.  As for renting an apartment and not having much left over for more than the cheapest items, that sounds pretty much like real life to me.  A starting out sim who has just left home or college shouldn't be able to afford to buy a house or have expensive furniture.

Thank you! I was just about to ask how this could be done. I hate furnishing houses ATM.
The fact that the rent is higher is just a feature in my opinion. I played a house once, and in first generation they had more than 100.000 simoleons. I do not want this to happen again. Also, as Kyna said, it is way more realistic that they can't afford nice, expensive things.

Btw, is it normal that sims get more money when they start out? Some of my CAS sims had 35.000 simoleons instead of the regular 20.000 when I played them for the first time.

Yes, new with AL, something like - 20,000 for the first adult, 5,000 for every additional adult, 3,000 per teen, 2,000 per child, 1,000 per toddler, 500 per pet. 

How stupid! All the poverty challenges are around for a reason! Too much money. As if it wasn't bad enough already. I hope Pescado will come up with a noinstantrichsims-hack.

I hope so too. It's ridiculous and makes the game far too easy. I could understand maybe a §3000 grant if the family has 4+ kids or younger in it (this seems realistic). Even then, I prefer how it was.

Anyway, I honestly don't think the apartments are that expensive. Someone worked out that it's actually much cheaper than buying a house, as you can buy nice things and leave aside a large amount of money for rent without even having to get a job. There are only four full weeks in the adult stage. It really isn't that expensive at all, and gives you a great choice: Rent a place, less control but more money for crap, or invest in a house/plot of land, full control, but little money left over? I'd like a hack to make furnished apartments MOAR expensive!

   If you don't wish to run with Testing Cheats on, Carrigon at Sims2Workshop has a hack allowing all of the apt door options to show.
http://www.sims2workshop.com/viewtopic.php?t=2900 (http://www.sims2workshop.com/viewtopic.php?t=2900)

   To be honest, with her hack and having all options showing once you've moved in is a tad irritating (at least, all options constantly show in Testing Cheats mode)
    And i also was surprised to see Carrigon hop on the AL bandwagon so quick.  :)

Well, apartments should make some good poverty challenges.  They are an excellent way to separate a Sim from money.  Much more efficient than buying a lot with a house on it because the hurt is refreshed every Monday.

I think the new calculations was because ... it never made sense a family of 2 adults, 2 elders and 2 teens starting with the same funds as a "family" of 1, you might disagree but now the starting money makes sense.

As for the apartments ... well either the "rent furnished" not showing up is a bug or they could not setup 2 types of rents, a furnished and unfurnished one so they decided to pick the most sensible option since furnishing apartments is more for NPCs that move in and not playable families .

The IKEA stuff pack finally makes sense... :)

If you magic wand the lot before moving anyone in, it typically reduces rent to about 70% of the un-wanded version. Unwanded, my grey tower lot with attached playground, 2bed/2bath units was $2,226. Wanded, it was $1,644.

I think it does make sense to have a different amount of start-out money for a different amount of sims as well, but they could have just lowered the amount for a single sim, as 20,000 is really way too much for one sim to have any problems starting out. And if people don´t like it giving sims insane amount of money via cheating is very easy.

I would have liked a random amount for CAS sims, that way some families would have to start out poor and some have it easier. Would have been a bit more realistic.

If you want to move your sims from apartment to apartment, why not just put all their furniture into inventory?

This is what happens in real life! And you move and you have to redecorate the new place because your sofas clash awfully with the wallpaper  :D

What is this "wallpaper" you speak of? Here in Chicago, we get white walls and moulding that's been painted over a hundred times until it's a nearly unrecognizable lump.

Personally, I always thought it was stupid that multi-sim families got the same amount as single sims. This new system makes much more sense to me. To each her own.

I agree.

Tell me about it, in our last apartment even the light switch plates had been painted over. And over, and over, and over.

I think it's because slapping on a fresh coat of paint is easier than cleaning.   :P

Urgh, that reminds me of the house I once moved into that had the bathtub painted over because the previous residents didn't want to clean it.  :-X

We had one where the windows had been painted shut.

My husband had an apartment where someone had painted the INSIDE of his fridge. He said that paint flaked off of that thing for years.

In two separate buildings I've had to have outlets replaced because the idiot painter painted over the sockets. The current apartment is better with it's original woodwork all intact.