This is an information thread rather than a question thread.
It explains how the "Fill Empty Houses" works (or doesn't work) in a multi-generational challenge and what you may (or may not) wish to do about it, provided your challenge allows such intervention.
Background:In her "Townie Dynasty with Zest" story,
@MarianT first showed me that a house becomes completely unfurnished when its former occupants die out.
A house can also become unfurnished if you move its occupants from the house using "Keep Furniture."
To move from a house while leaving it furnished, choose "Sell Furniture," obviously.
I'm currently playing a Pinstar Legacy and have reached my fourth generation. I have all available packs installed.
Also, I'm playing with MC Command Center (in a separate Sims 4 folder so it doesn't affect my other Sims 4 games), which I've set so only married couples in houses can reproduce.
The Problem:Recently, I've noticed that Willow Creek is filled with households while Oasis Springs and San Myshuno are quite empty.
I grabbed a not-in-the-world couple and tried moving them into every unoccupied lot and guess what?
Roughly 75% of the unoccupied lots were "Unfurnished."
Even if you have enabled the "Fill Empty Houses" feature, it will ignore any residential lots that do not contain beds.
Naturally, this creates a big problem in a multi-generation dynasty or legacy challenge, reducing the pool of available houses/apartments for occupancy.
The longer you play, the fewer houses become available.
The FixFor the "Fill Empty Houses" feature to move a household into a house or apartment, that dwelling must be recognized as containing a bed.
What's misleading is that a lot will
appear furnished if you enter Build Mode for that lot from the World Map. Don't be fooled!
*The remedy: Enter Build mode in the unfurnished residence and add, at least, one bed.
*For houses: I took a homeless couple around to check which houses could only be moved into "Unfurnished," then replaced such houses with the same houses from the Gallery.
For starters, all the houses occupied by the original townies had become unfurnished.
(Thankfully, other simmers upload the original Maxis houses for the rest of us.)
*For apartments: Check the apartment's listing. If it says "Furnishings: $0," that apartment is no longer furnished.
Congrats, you're done! Yes, that's a lot of work.
And please note that this kind of intervention is illegal in this forum's dynasty challenges.
And, sorry for the wall of text. But this issue had me stumped for a week so I thought I'd share what I learned...
Happy simming!
