Question about fill houses option?

[Supernova]

I turned on fill houses because my town doesn't have many sims. So far there seems to be no new sims. Is it because they need a house at a starter price or does it just not work? I have many houses that I downloaded from the gallery and a couple of starter homes in my world.

[Shewolf13]

It takes time for it to work and there have been a few issues with houses not filling correctly.  I would wait at least a week to see if houses are being filled.  If you aren't doing a challenge, you can fill houses yourself through Manage Worlds and households.

[Playalot]

It is a little unreliable. Often traveling to the actual neighborhoods can trigger some of the houses being filled. Other times talking to out of world sims at a park or some other community lot can trigger those sims being placed into a house. It generally happens over time and usually no more than 5 houses across all worlds.

When you are in live mode, if your sims clicks on a empty house there is an option to fill that house with sims from your library. That is often a good quick way to add more sims into your worlds and straight into houses. I have a stash of townies that I made for this purpose. I randomized their traits when I made them so it feels more like 'game generated townies' I'm using rather than 'hand picked' sims.