I do all the time

In the past I've even transformed expensive mansions into group homes where everyone shared the house with others it was awesome, AL lets you create pretty much any kind of residential property with the

"ChangeLotZoning apartmentbase"

cheat enabled after you put in the essentials and only have one entrance per apartment trailer or room, of the home. you can create a back yard but it needs to be either fenced in or unique separator needs to be in place or you cannot transform any lot into an apartment if it is not closed off completely by a wall or a fence or separator.

I've created custom trailer parks and apartment complexes with 16 apartments or 10 trailers before and it was fun.

I know that apartments or trailers or even townhomes are included with the expansion pack. But did you know you can also use AL to transform a house into a rental property or a group home? I even think it is possible to share a ride as part of the rent as well

A group home is a usually a special home where single people stay that cannot afford an apartment or are simply unable to live on their own for any reason, one common reason why a real life person would be in a group home would be someone who is mentally ill and needs support, in the sims if it were more realistic the landlord would give you your sims medication, cook and clean the place for you while your sims live life depending on who owns the group home in a real life setting, that is.

In a sim group home in the sims 2, you basically put an apartment entrance on any bedroom, and if it has a bathroom attached you just need to seal it off on the other sides from the rest on the home, all you need in a group home is a bed one sim to sleep in, NPC's only go into their apartments to sleep anyway so it would make sense for the group home setting to be real. you can also share a kitchen where NPC and you can also prepare food just like in a lot of AFC homes do in real life America. Sims will still need to pay rent but you can simply pay the rent for your room off a sims part time job.

How many ever thought of putting an AFC/Group home into your neighborhood, they also call them halfway houses for people just getting out of jail or homeless too.

Beleve it or not you may even have an AFC home in your real life neighborhood city, they do have them in cities and towns you know?

here is a new creation I made just now it's an AFC home under creator feedback
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=660875

The shipped apartments are all intolerable. Of course I build my own, and make single-family rentals, too. I've built a YMCA for the poorest of the poor, where each apartment has only a bed and a phone and everything else is common area, but I haven't playtested it.

You should playtest it Peni

A YMCA is pretty impressive, it's interesting to see what sims will do on those kinds of lots, they will watch tv if you got one for them to watch, they will dance to a stereo in the community, the only thing you need to do is make sure your personal sims have a refrigerator for the community fridge to be fully activated. otherwise all you can eat is Jello. but I am unsure if that means unlimited Jello if you don't have a refrigerator through

most times sims will spend sleeping in and in their rooms Or at work though but occasionally they will interact with the community objects and the landlord will even clean up the place even the community toilets and bathtub showers that sims will sometimes use, it's cool

I had a YMCA/barracks at one point but it was in a previous installation so I've lost it now. Upstairs, it had single rooms with bathroom down the hall for new recruits, double rooms with bathroom for the slightly higher ranks, and one family apartment (single room, double room and bathroom), plus chess boards on the landing. Downstairs, it had a dining room, music room, gym, reading room and recreational facilities, and there was a football pitch out the back. I also had duplex 2-bedroom bungalows and three-bedroom houses, a detached four-bedroom house for senior officers (I messed that one up with stairs leading to the back garden, so had to use Inge's Rent/Mortgage Shrubs instead), and used the Maxis Fortress for the General's quarters.

I have my Pudding Lane Boarding House, which is similar in room size to the barracks, starting at 3x2 for $60 a week, but has no amenities and the most horribly dark, old-fashioned floral print wallpaper I could find; and the Warehouse Apartments, with four bachelor pads priced at about $450 a week and two one-bedroom apartments priced at about $890 - cheaper than the Maxis City Center one-bedrooms and with a much bigger bedroom, and a cleaner layout of the rest of it which means the usable space is about the same. The Warehouse Apartments also have a dog bath out the front.

The next thing I want to do is some cheap 3-bedroom apartments, as the Sentinel Apartments are borked and the Crossroads and Seaspray townhouses are beyond the budget of some of my Sims who need a third bedroom, plus in some of them the bathroom can only be accessed through a bedroom. Somebody really didn't think that through!

I have a mix of ones I built myself, ones I have converted from residential, and downloaded versions made by others. I only actually really got into building them from the apartment build contest on here a few years ago, there were so many great entries for inspiration in that contest thread!

In my megahood I have a little group home for single parents, each room is just basics (bed, crib, fridge, counter, cooker and phone in one room and an "en suite bathroom") - with 2 large community rooms - one being a play room for toddlers, and the other has TV, bookcase, sofa, easel, stereo and 2 vending machines.

I also have a trailer park, because I didn't like the one shipped with the game. It has 3 trailers, all are 2 bedrooms each, have a small "yard" and access to the roof (where the Powers family band keep their instruments), and also has a communal tree house for the trailer park kids and a knocked over bin (pet bed).

Then I also have some town houses in Pleasantview, some apartments overlooking the sea in Desiderata Valley and probably some more apartments scattered here and there. But they're fairly mundane builds.

I always build my own apartments and rarely use ones by other people, as they typically don't fit to my tastes. For example, I've seen trailer park apartment lots that are much too big to be actual trailers. If a Sim of mine is living in a trailer, it is most likely because they are an outsider who cannot afford anything else. So I will make the tiniest trailers I can with the bare essentials. It's a challenge to have such a tiny trailer and design it to avoid routing issues. I have to make choices of what items my Sims will have due to lack of space, and what items they will sacrifice.

I have a motel in Cliffrose Heights that is incredibly cheap to stay in. I want it to be small and cheap because my Sims that live there are just crashing there, living there temporarily. The rooms are pretty cramped, with a double bed, island counter with two stools, mini fridge, oven, and a bathroom. If I made the room huge, I might as well send those Sims to live in a nicer apartment. It makes sense to me that my apartments for my poorer Sims are more cramped with less features.

I also like more extravagant apartments, but those are for Sims that can afford the crazy rent each week. Currently I don't have anyone that wealthy in my hood.

I've always built my own apartment lots from boarding houses for the poorest sims facing hard times and for newcomers to trailer parkes,apartments and condos for sims living on modest incomes that are affordable and even options that might be less affordable for sims at higher incomes as well as subsidized housing of all kinds for homeless and sims who are starting out as teens or older.

I have built and uploaded a few to this site. https://modthesims.info/downloads/a...ype=1&u=1433933
Those are the only ones I have built apart from changing a couple of lots in-game to apartments.

I always build my own. I especially like "flop houses"- rooms are tiny, bathroom is down the hall, a cook always has food ready (the only place I don't mind their lack of cooking creativity). A living room has all the simple learning and fun things that a crappy place would have. And everything looks like a dump. Funny that they can still "want a roommate"...
I hate Maxis apartments, there are never enough things to do communally.

I love to build apartments! I have many in my main neighbourhood, most of the buildings in this image are apartments I've built.

@simsample They look awesome! They really are the realistic but slightly simplified build style that I like the most. (to be able to play and at the same time look pretty). I would love to play that neighborhood !!

@simsample that is a vary realistic neighborhood, I'm impressed with the great detail

These are the last apartments I built for Strangetown. An old abandoned motel has been converted into one room units, with a communal catering space.

Thank you @Sokisims and @Aspersim , it's my old town Lacuna Delta which I've been playing for over a decade I think; built on my Lacuna terrain from this set. The apartments are very simple; I used to mess around with constrainfloorelevation cheats to build fancy split level lots but now I primarily build for ease of play and to suit my style. I love to have everything visible without moving the camera much so hence smaller lots; I love to see what all sims are up to without missing anything hence most of the non-apartment lots are single storey. I take a lot of pictures, so ceilings distorted by CFE are out. And if I don't like it from neighbourhood view, it's also out! Also, a lot of my apartments are built to suit my penchant for apartment townies and room mates; most of them have a spare bedroom for roomies, and many have narrow corridors and a stereo for hilarity with apartment corridor smustle. Of course most people would find all that most annoying, so I build apartments that I share slightly differently!
I have some apartments that are made to look like semi-detatched houses but most of these got demolished and rebuilt over the years. So most of the apartments are blocks with communal recreation areas.


Most of my sims start off their adult life in an apartment, and then buy a house when they have more money. I still have room in the neighbourhood for new houses at the moment, but unfortunately my little farm (right of the following picture) has to be made smaller when I build new lots!


I might add some roads to the terrain at a later date; I have edited the neighbourhood terrain many times over the years (last one I did was to change the bridge elevations). I like having one huge neighbourhood instead of lots of subhoods; this one doesn't have a downtown or a business hood, but it does have a uni, an island vacation hood and the (edited) witch and hobby hoods.

@Aysarth I love that motel apartment! I may try that in my hood. Very fitting for Strangetown!

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OMG I can read Simlish! Can you give me a link to (or PM me) the sign that says "Bates Motel/no vacancies"?

The mesh is called Big Arrow Outdoor Sign, by ShannaniSims. I think I got it from from TSR. I made the recolour myself. If you pick up the mesh let me know, and you can have it.

Pretty please could you send it my way also @Aysarth ?

I found the sign. It is here https://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/308528

My recolour is here http://simfileshare.net/folder/148004/

The sign shows up under Lighting/Miscellaneous.

Thank you! :lovestruc

Aysarth: I don't see a way to download your recolor, do I have to have an account?

grammapat, you should be able to just click on it--no need for an account. I tested it logged in and out of simfileshare.

And I've seen that sign before--I've got a simlish version by Currantpotpie (If anyone's interested in that, you should be able to preview it here and the actual file is Currantpotpie's directory, called "Shannanigan Signs")

It's a SFS "folder" type link. You have to click the file you want to download (in this case there's just one file in the SFS folder, but there could be several), then you can click the download button. Like Phantomknight said, no need for an account.

You can see it on the link:
simfileshare(.)net/download/(number) - goes directly to the download
simfileshare(.)net/folder/(number) - goes to a folder

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(On the topic of apartments, I much prefer using regular residential lots. Haven't played much with apartments, but I generally find building restrictions very tedious, and anything I need to use a bunch of cheatcodes to work around for building and/or playing with even more so. If I need an "apartment-like" building for storytelling, it's also a lot easier to go the residential route than having to muck about with actual apartments. It's probably fun for those who like to play with smaller families and who like the added play, but it's not something I miss for the kind of playstyle I prefer).

Thanks guys, was able to download.