Preferrable Houses

[Dark Trepie]

First and most important thing:  Three bedrooms and two baths.  I like making all of my couple have two kids, a boy and a girl.

I'm assuming you're talking about a second home?  I've never been able to manage more than 2 bedrooms and generally only 1 bath with $20K.  Since I've taken to using the "No 20K Handouts" mod, early budgets are often even more restrictive.

 - Gus

Yeah.  This is usually the second home.  Three bedroom/2 bath is near impossible with only 20k unless you sacrifice things like paint, window, lights, flooring, and roof.  Which I've had to do in some extreme cases.  That family of 5 in the family bin in Veronaville who only have 20k was a pain in the arse to get started.  I finally broke down and used J.M.'s moneyorder to have Consort send them about 30k.

[reggikko]

First, to answer the question....I rarely download lots because I like building. Furnished or unfurnished is ok. No huge lots. I love it when someone comes up with an innovative design that's low or moderately priced since I don't use money cheats. No terrain paint. My biggest pet peeve is when someone uploads something to the exchange with custom content from a pay site and/or haven't credited the creators of shared content.

I hadn't built anything for upload in a while, but this thread inspired me. This is just an FYI. If you like something, tell me in my guestbook so as not to clog the thread. And if you don't like something, keep your damn opinion to yourself!  I just uploaded a couple of starter homes, one with a driveway and one with an attached garage. Also, several small community lots, a Bistro, Boutique with coffee shop, Bowling alley, and gameroom with a small restaurant. Oh yeah, the bowling alley has a diner. I have a hard time playing anything designed by Maxis and I hate sprawling lots.

I limit myself to Maxis-only content when I build for upload, so if it ain't the prettiest decorating around, don't blame me! Heh. Also, I have a separate 'building' folder, so no hacks are coming along for the ride. All lots guaranteed to be nothing especially fancy, but nice enough, and very playable.

http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/mysimpage.php?user_id=1132625

[Myth]

I would like to add one thing that I look for before I download a house.  I always look at the creator uploaded photos. Better quality, larger photos and collages really float my boat.  It's the difference of having someone tell you about the new 2006 Mustang GT and test driving it.  I want to see footprints, close ups of main room anything eye catching that highlights the design.

Rarely will I download anything based on the Maxi's picture alone.  You have to admit they aren't that flattering.

[cwykes]

I had a few more thoughts:
1. the starter house should be expandable as the family grows and earns money.  Plan where a staircase will go if you build a bungalow so you don't have to change the whole floorplan when you want to put another floor on top.
2. for a starter home 1 bedroom is enough with room for a double and 1 or 2 singles.  No point having 2 small rooms with low room scores instead of 1 with a reasonable score. 
3. a starter family can manage with 1 bathroom, but a 2nd bathroom is always the first thing you have to add.  If you only have 1 bathroom, don't put a sink in it, just shower and loo.  Neat sims can wash their hands in the kitchen sink and vacate the bathroom!
4.  I like a garden that can be used as a room -  You can put the dining set on an outside patio plus easels, gym equipment bookcase and chair.  I usually put the baby and toddler stuff outside too. Ponds with lilies work for me as they don't need gardeners.  I wouldn't download a lot with nothing in the garden.  sims go through the garden on the way to work, so it needs to have a good room score.
5. A big cheap kitchen is a waste of space and money in a starter home.  I always put the expensive fridge and one expensive counter in a starter home to improve the food and forget the cooker - they can't use it without any cooking points and it's asking for trouble when they don't have many.!

[baratron]

It's almost not worth me saying anything because I'm just echoing everyone else, but yes - I also prefer small houses.

Although I have a decent computer now, I remain paranoid about large lots. When I got TS1 my PC was four times over the recommended stats, but by the time I had all the EPs on it, it was barely making the minimum stats (and in practice, I couldn't run Superstar At All - Studio Town was unplayably slow). Laptops are difficult to upgrade, and I can't guarantee to have a spare £1000 for a new one when TS2's EPs require it. So, even though I could run huge sprawling lots right now, I keep my houses fairly compact.

Also, I hate the slow navigation time of large houses. Sim routing being what it is, they sometimes take the strangest paths to get from one place to another. I think it is unrealistic to have sims take a whole sim hour to get from their kitchen to the carpool. So my houses have lots of doors between rooms, and paths 2 squares wide for sims to find.

I don't like to use money cheats except in cases of extreme need (like if a sim would otherwise die of starvation). So I like houses that are affordable. Too often sites have amazing houses available for download that cost in excess of $100k. How many sim families can afford something like that? On top of that, sites add to the cheating by cloning e.g. the most expensive fridges and pricing them at $50. With TS1, I actually spent a lot of time with the Transmogrifier re-making downloaded objects with realistic prices for my game .

I won't download anything that costs more than $50k fully-furnished (which means, in practise, I pretty much never download houses). If the house is supposed to be a starter home, it should have at least the basic furnishings needed to live for a few days included within the $20k, or it should be unfurnished and priced at around $14-15k. I like small houses that are laid out in a fashion so they can easily be extended later, with an extra room on the side or a bit of internal rearrangement to make an extra bathroom. It surprises me how many sim builders insist on making two or three-storey houses, even as starter homes. I often start with bungalows with space to add a staircase and second floor later.

[Motoki]

2. for a starter home 1 bedroom is enough with room for a double and 1 or 2 singles.  No point having 2 small rooms with low room scores instead of 1 with a reasonable score. 

I know this was a big thing with TS1, but I find room size to not play any signifigant factor on environment score in TS2. In fact, the headmaster almost always scores little bathrooms highest and likes them best of all the rooms I show him, including large nice well lit ones with expensive furniture and artwork. Go figure.

3. a starter family can manage with 1 bathroom, but a 2nd bathroom is always the first thing you have to add.  If you only have 1 bathroom, don't put a sink in it, just shower and loo.  Neat sims can wash their hands in the kitchen sink and vacate the bathroom!

I agree. For my poor sims just starting out, I don't mess with bathroom sinks. In fact, I'd say for a second bathroom if the budget is really tight, even just a toilet is fine. My parents' house and the house of friends of mine both have a toilet only bathroom downstairs with the main bathroom upstairs. Toilets are by far the more important of the 2 as they have to use them more often and guests will also need to use them.

I also personally prefer the shower or tub to be divided by a wall or off in a separate room altogether as from a functional point of view it makes more sense for sims so that they aren't prevented from using the toilet when someone is showering or vice versa. As long as the shower isn't more than 10 squares from the toilet, Bathroom Uses You should still be able to detect it if someone is using that hack. This isn't something that I would not download a lot for mind you, it's easy enough to rearrange, it's just sort of my functional sim philosophy on building.

[Hook]

I don't mind more expensive homes.  Some of the best fun I had in Sims 1 was getting a family enough money to buy the expensive house on the hill.

Besides, money's ridiculously easy to make, especially with Uni.  And now that we can take career rewards with us (in the inventory) there's no reason not to start in a small starter home and trade up when funds are available.  And all this is without cheating if you prefer to play that way, which I do.

But all in all, I enjoy building sometimes and it's great fun to make a Sim house from house plans or based on a real house.  After playing for a while, you get to know, just looking at a house plan, what will work well and what won't.  I suspect the real houses will be the same way, as the houses I've built from real life have had the same problems the real house had.

Hook

[Zeljka]

I don't download many homes, but I do prefer the smaller ones.
The first thing I do is remove all floors and wallpaper and furniture, replacing it with my own choices. I suppose my ideal would be one story, no foundation, affordable without cheats and nothing in it, but a lot of pictures of the place decorated and lived in so I can see where things should go.
It needs to have at least one unobstructed view in, preferably 2 or more. I only use the Holy Smoke stairs inside and always place my fridge near the back or side so it's not in my way. I prefer my kitchen large enough for a table and also separate toilet/shower for improved efficiency.

[Kyna]

I like inexpensive houses with cheap furniture because I play with Pescado's No20kHandout mod.  I need small to medium, relatively inexpensive houses for my financially challenged graduates, with 2 or 3 bedrooms - or room to expand later - and preferably a foundation and/or a second bathroom.  (If they're really broke, they get the smallest lot with a 3x2 bathroom and live on the lawn until they can afford a real house).

I like houses to be decorated, even if only cheap paint and floor coverings, as I suck at interior decoration.

I play TS2U (not getting NL until Pescado's fixed it) with Pecado's Director's Cut.  I want houses that work well with these hacks - so I'm not into pretty diagonal doors that make my game go ugly, or bathrooms too close to each other that won't work well with BathroomUsesYou.

I don't want to download a house with hacks.  I'm choosy about which hacks I allow into my game (after a bad experience where I downloaded the alienware computer with a house) I'd prefer it if builders made their houses hack-free and let me decide what hacks I want in my game.  Similar situation with custom walls & floors - I'm sick of files in my download directory with names that are alphanumeric garbage.

I hate building houses.  If anyone knows a free site where I can find houses that fit my criteria, please let me know.

BTW, Cwykes, I have your Willow Walk series already.  As my sim families expand, I find the houses are easy to expand by adding an upstairs ... they're the kind of houses I look for.

[jewels]

I used to prefer to build my own, but they always turned into a wreck once I started adding on rooms and such. Now I much prefer to download other people's lots because they have the talent that I'm lacking. I also like to see how creative people can get in the design of the house and with the furnishings.

-J

Edit: I forgot.. I also prefer small-medium houses because they are much easier to navigate and keep track of everyone in them.

[Baa]

Don't get me wrong, I love building houses, but I much rather have them built for me.

When downloading homes, I mostly look at some of the featured ones because featured lots, generally are the cream of the crop offered on the Exchange. If none of the recently featured lots interest me, I search the exchange for what I'm looking for.

A few things I avoid are:

• houses with the sign.
- not because I don't like custom objects and meshes, but because you can NEVER be sure what you're getting from the exchange. The lot could possibly have a hack that I do not want in my game.

• Enormous lots
my game simply can't render a 453 story mansion.

• Lots with a lot of terrain paints
not only does it make the lot look horrible, I hate sifting through the enormity that is my terrain paints catelouge.

[Melancholic Madam]

I like the smaller houses for my sims.  I'm talking about a 2x2 lot or a 2x3 lot.  my computer handles those lots much better than the larger lots.  I like one story houses best, but will play a two story house or one with a basement if it suits my needs.  I don't use any money cheats, so my sims have to start out with starter homes for under $20K.  I will not download anything that uses any custom content at all.  I did originally when I got the game, but as it began to run slower and slower, I culled everything out.  while I admire the houses and the skill involved in building the houses that Maxis picks to feature, they are not for my game.  now I play my game with JM's hacks only. 

I don't really have a preference on if the house is furnished or not.  I do like to see how others decorate, but willl furnish it myself if it is inexpensive enough to allow for it.  I've downloaded many houses off the exchange, but more recently have built my own.  if I see something that I like and fits my plan, then I'll download.  I use the clean installer even then to make absolute sure that nothing gets through as many of the houses on the exchange still have stuff within the package even without the warning sign. 

[Motoki]

re: Diagonal Doors

Supposedly this is fixed with NL and once you install NL it should no longer cause any problems. I actually had an old pre-uni house with one and never noticed any issues or even realized there was a problem until I saw others post about it. The maid always cleaned that room and it did have 2 other regular door entrances so I assume she just went through those. *shrug*

re: Featured Lots on the Exchange

Personally, I find them generally to be either huge and overly bloated or very nice to look at but horrendously unplayable. I feel like they choose the featured lots based on flashy looks over any sort of playability and I have yet to ever see anything remotely close to a starter house as a featured lot. Of course I don't check every day either.

re: The triangle symbol on the Exchange denoting custom content

I'm of two minds about that symbol. On one hand, I'm kind of glad they did it, but on the other I feel like it unfairly slaps a label on lots with any custom content, even benign Maxis custom content like the room divider or garden shrubs, to an already paranoid userbase and implies there is always something wrong or dangerous with custom content which isn't the case. Walls, foors and object recolors are pretty harmless, and anyway as long as you are installing your lots with Sims2pack Clean Installer, which everyone really should be doing, you can always browse through what is packed up in the lot and choose what you want and what you don't, even right down to unselecting all the custom content and just loading the lot itself.

For objects, if you don't have one the lot uses the game will default it to another existing object of the same type. So if I load a lot that had the alienware computer in it without loading the alienware computer package then the computer will default to become the Little Sister computer instead. Disabling the custom content and just uploading a lot itself may make some of the stuff look odd and not quite match, but it will still be furnished.

[Andygal]

I don't like huge big houses because they are just impatritical, they take forever for the sims to get from A to B, and they lag my computer.

[witch]

For objects, if you don't have one the lot uses the game will default it to another existing object of the same type.

That's good to know. I wondered what would happen but I rarely download lots & haven't experimented.

For those who are interested, I've made three starter unfurnished homes (under 20K) on small lots and will make probably another 3-4 over the weekend. You will be able to download them from variousimmers under 'witch' in the next few days - I just have to take some photos and upload them. New experience for me these small lots, I keep thinking, 'oh, french doors and a patio would look nice there' and having to stop because it would cost too much. 

The homes I made are just like real life, cooker, sink and benches in the kitchen, shower and toilet, lights, wallpaper and carpet but no curtains or furnishings.

[witch]

There are half a dozen starter houses on this site that look reasonable and are under 20K.

http://www.laurel-designs.us/eng/index.html

[bluecatvon]

i love the homes people build, i've downloaded a few ones too, but haven't had the guts to install them..it's been like..almost a year they've cluttered in my computer..

what i look for in a house is bathrooms. haha! yes, lots of bathrooms! can't stand them shooing each other away when one needs to go potty and the other needs to have a bubble bath.

i like an unfurnished house. like gethane, i thrive on boosting their aspiration while going shopping!

ooh thanks cywkes! never really occurred to me to build a small community lot. i'll build one today! with shops and pools and hottubs all in one place! thanks!

[cwykes]

BTW, Cwykes, I have your Willow Walk series already.  As my sim families expand, I find the houses are easy to expand by adding an upstairs ... they're the kind of houses I look for.

I'm glad you like them...    you made my day!  do you know what they look like in NL - does the river idea work?
I've been thinking about that no20k hack as well....

ooh thanks cywkes! never really occurred to me to build a small community lot. i'll build one today! with shops and pools and hottubs all in one place! thanks!

NB - I recommend you only put one checkout till in the lot, so the number of NPCs is down to 1 and more sims can visit the lot. I also recommend a chess table!

[Diala]

A few more things...

- I tend to download houses on small or medium lots, since I find that it is enough space for me. I dislike huge houses myself, since I find myself at a loss to figure out what to put in each of the extra bedrooms. Depending on how many people are living in the house, I'd perfer 2-4 bedrooms. Usually my families are around 2-5 members each, so room isn't much of a problem... but I'd like one of the bedrooms to be some place where I place things such as canvases, pianos, career objects, all that crap. 2 bathrooms are usually enough for me.
- I like houses with unusual and creative designs. That is why I don't tend to download starter homes, since they tend to plain. I can easily make myself a plain home. The only Maxis-made house I liked was that Modern Artistic home... I forgot the name, but it came standard with TS2. That college house with the pool is also wonderful: I placed it in my regular neighborhood.
- I don't like bumpy or rugged terrain. The flatter, the better. This is mostly because the more rugged the terrain, the more slower it is for me.

[bluecatvon]

ooh thanks cywkes! never really occurred to me to build a small community lot. i'll build one today! with shops and pools and hottubs all in one place! thanks!

NB - I recommend you only put one checkout till in the lot, so the number of NPCs is down to 1 and more sims can visit the lot. I also recommend a chess table!

haha! thanks for the suggestion! i'll surely have a great fun later! cuz i love building, yes i do!

[witch]

OK. I have uploaded seven starter homes to variousimmers this evening. No hacks, no custom content, room for a driveway on every one. I used the 4-5 smallest lots available with NL and I was amazed thet most of them packed up to less than 0.5Mb each. All are under 20k.

I missed my custom walls and floors dreadfully but tried to get a theme going with crystals and their corresponding colours. I also tried to make every house different but also expandable. I loved how quick they were to build. I could knock out about one an hour.

Anyway, here's the link, let me know what you think.
Starter homes - the crystal series

[kasumiarmstrong]

Yesh!!!!

Starter homess!!!!!

*does a happy dance* 

[cwykes]

thanks - I've downloaded one and will try it out.  I don't have uni or NL, so the wallcoverings will probably be subsituted and the shower disappear.  It will actually fit in my willows neighbourhood I think  .  How about a matching community shop (food and clothes)?  - small size for extra playability...   pretty please?

[witch]

I'll have a think about a community lot, don't usually do them. It'll be at variousimmers if I do, so check back there.

[windy_moon]

Witch!

Thank you SO much!

I am desperate for some nice starter houses, and these are so nice. 

I might not play them for a few weeks as I'm not planning on adding new Sims or running more through Uni until after I install NL (and I'm being patient for patches before I do that)...but I'll get a lot of use out of these.

Thanks!!