More Awesome Than You!

Does anyone know the point to this shop in Bluewater?? Lovely little lot. Nice office layout but what do you sell? Books? Office furniture?

I bought two businesses and took the deeds out of my sims inventory, placed them on a shelf and I can't price them. Sims come in and read them. Thats it.

Am I missing a vital clue?

I thought it was decorative? I haven't heard of any way to buy real estate from a Sim. Imagine loading a house and finding that in your inventory. "Oh, Don Lothario, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? Two hair salons and a lot filled with sand from Strangetown?"

Did you set them for sale in Buy/Build Mode?  If not, try that.  Sims will browse the deed and decide if they want to buy.  The desicion will take a while and then it will be rung up through a cash register.  You must approve the transfer before the deed is sold.

Unless you are being sarcastic, I imagined that they would buy the deed and that would appear in their inventory. Decoration my arse. Whats the point of having the store?? I have been giving Maxis some slack on this EP. Really I have. But now, making bogus shops? Thats just shitty and f*cken annoying!!

As far as I am aware, when you go to set the price of anything, the buy/build mode is opened?

Well, the shop console (top right) has the price tag thing?  That's what I meant.

Thats what I used. I honestly don't think you can sell them. Have you actually done it?

No, but it can obviously be done.

Not necessarily. From what I can gather, if you can't buy it from the catalogue or make it, it ain't for sale.

Not obvious to me....

DSE, I was not being sarcastic...I really thought it was "decorative."

 From the Prima Guide

   Real estate can be sold Sim to Sim by placing deed objects on a lot and marking them for sale.   Sims browse the deed like any other item ( though the decision will take quite a while and require considerable and effective sales intervention) then purchase the deed at a cash register.
  Unlike regular objects, you must approve the transfer before the deed is finally sold.
  Thus, one could set up a real estate office that deals solely in deeds.    Such a business would require a large amount of cash, since every deed for sale must first be purchased at it's market price (the owner of the real estate office would be the owner of the deeds)

Marg! I could kiss you!

I have my little prima guide, my little bit of treasure, here with me now. I shall look it up!

Wonder why I couldn't select it. But I'll keep trying!

What else could deeds be for?  Seem pointless...speaking of which, wouldn't it make sense to get a deed for a new house you move into, also?

And I got what I said from the Prima Guide also.

Uh, yeah, you could have said that in the first place.

I'm surprised. I thought it was just for storytelling purposes. Playing that sounds as fun as watching paint dry.

 ;D   
      Good Luck      I haven't tried it yet either.

Not only is it possible to mark deeds for sale (I used the tool in the business panel), I sold an inexpensive lot (a little over $7000) to Brandon Lillard with almost no effort at all when I tested it out.

Lot selling works. Just hang the deed ona  wall and mark it for sale, it won't be long before you get kicked off the lot because someone else bought it.

ive never tried this myself but think about this:
get manipulate perk (it almost always work)
buy an expensive lot (say something worth 200-300k), mark it for sale at rediculously expensive and manipulate the first customer coming into the store of buying it.
then close the business and clear the negative customer loyalty.
then you do this all over again

Sounds like an ideal business for a partnership: Shyster & Fly-B'Knight  ;D

I should be making notes who is buying the lots I have for sale at the RE office.  I have been selling off downtown at lightning speed!  Making sure to only sell to townies though.  Thank you Maxis for their bottomless wallets!  I am curious if I visit those lots with my playable Sims, will the townies I sold them to be running them?

According to the Prima guide the lots that the townies buy will be returned to community status and available to purchase yet again.  Haven't tried this yet, though.

Wow, your alien is pretty cute with the pink hair, SimSherry!

I never thought the real estate office can be functional.  :D But i'm still confused here. So do you have a sim purchase this real estate office in order to sell deeds? If not, then does it mean that you (the sim) has to go to the office lot (where you can't make any savable changes since you don't own it) and put up the deeds for sale, and wait until a buyer buys it before you can go home? But as far as I know, you can't set prices for items if you don't own a lot. So can somebody who has done this show me step by step, please? thanks.

[TO ADD] Also, I assume we can sell our deeds wherever, even in our own home (home business), not necessarily in the real estate office, right?

You have to buy the real estate office to use it to sell a deed, but you can sell a deed in any business also. The game really doesn't make any distinction between business types. The real estate office is just an example, like all the other businesses they put in Bluewater Village that are examples of how to run a business that uses new-to-OFB features.

So, you have to buy the real estate office (or any comm lot) in order to sell deeds.  But that's some extra financial requirement. Can you sell it at your home business?

You have to buy the real estate office to sell deeds AT the real estate office, but you can sell deeds at any business.


This scenario is the one that cannot happen.

Yes.  You can also sell the deeds back to the community by phone or computer.  I've been playing around with this a bit and so far I have Nicole Thompson-McCarthy (former teen clerk, college graduate, & current wife of George McCarthy, another former clerk and graduate) as the owner of 5 business lots.  Most of these had little or nothing on them at purchase.  I sent her to visit each lot and had her work them until they achieved at least 1 rank (and were therefore more valuable) before going back to real estate office and setting the deed for sale.  One of her shops is the Just Flowers something-or-other place and she hired a Downtownie Slob as manager, and he's doing great since he came with nice badges in both sales and flower arrangement.  This way she can run the business remotely and collect the profit until it sells.  At least, this is my plan.  We'll see how it works.


Thank you!  :D

The Real Estate office seems awfully impractical.  You can buy any number of ordinary items and resell them.  You can craft any number of items.  But there's a very definite limit on the amount of land available in a neighborhood.  Sooner or later you're going to run out of land plots to sell.

I suppose you could make more by adding empty commercial districts just for the land.

 - Gus

But when you sell them to townies and other nonplayables, they go right back into the available pool. You buy a lot, sell it to a townie for more than you paid for it, it becomes free again. Buy it again, and you can sell the same plot of land to some other townie (or, better yet, THE SAME TOWNIE), make money on it AGAIN...  ;D

I really enjoyed the real estate office thing. You need alot of cash but the profits came rolling in when you sell a few. Plus I didn't need any lazy staff and if a playable sim asked to purchase, I just said no to releasing the deed. Still a hack to stop them coming into your store, any store, would be good.

It's already done, Darkstormyeve: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3419.0

Thanks akatonbo! I spent my weekend playing rather than board reading  ;) which is rare for me at times.