During the course of
this thread, I conducted an experiment with building apartments. The end result was a basic, but highly functional, full service apartment building that was remarkably affordable and could accommodate a family of 4. And here is the result:
The Whitemore Apartments
Lot Size: 40x30
Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 1
Cost when placed on X lot: $10,977
Cost when placed on X lot unfurnished: $7,225
Requires expansion/Sims 3 store content: Ambitions, Late Night
The apartment has very basic furnishings, and your starting funds will allow you to upgrade whichever piece of furniture you deem is most important for your sims. There are also 3 NPC apartments, so your sims will have plenty of neighbors to talk to. You'll also notice that there are
no elevators, so I put the player's apartment on the 2nd floor to increase the speed at which you leave for school/work.
It has a 4 car garage (one for each apartment, but NPC's don't park their cars there
), a full service laundry and a game room to keep your sims busy while they wait for their clothes to get dry.
And the back yard has a playground for the kids, a hot tub for the adults, and a pool for everyone! There is also an area set aside for planting your own garden.
While I didn't take a screen shot of it, there is a chessboard in the 3rd floor hallway. There is also a call box out front, and visitors
will use it when they stop by, allowing you to simply buzz everyone up without interrupting what your sims are doing.
Also, the landscaping is extremely basic. I'm not very good at it, and the only reason I did the amount that I did was to conceal the standard residential mailbox (there is currently no way to get apartment mailboxes on a self-built lot). The upside is that you can landscape it however you like, and by changing this and the outer wall covering, you could place this multiple times in the same neighborhood and have it look like completely different buildings.
To change the landscaping (or anything else) simply enter "testingCheatsEnabled true" and "restrictBuildBuyInBuildings false" and you're good to go (this will also help you see what I did so you can make your own). Also note that if you have a sim living there when you do this, the money for any upgrades
outside the apartment will come out of their household funds as well. However, this money will
not increase their net worth, and if they move it will not count towards the value of the house they are moving out of. That money will be lost.
