I tried finding infos online, but a lot is old. Maybe there is something newer that I'm not aware of. My sim bought 2 additional houses, right next to hers. I am wondering if those houses will eventually get NPC sims renting them or not, or if I must do something for it to happen. I ask because usually, when I start my game, load my house, I get a pop up message telling me my lot is exclude from tenant...(something like that)
Then my sim got a roommate. Once he was added, the pop up message changed into telling me I'll start making money, bla, bla.

But when my sim bought those 2 additional houses, I also start receiving pop up messages about them too. Saying I would receive (x amount of $, for each house) Then the message would go on saying since I had no NPC living in them, I would then get 0 Simoleons for them...
Which I thought, made it clear that having NPC's living in them paying rent was possible? Or this is simply letting me know that IF my sim was actually living in them, this is what I would get by having a roommate?

Thanks

When a sim owns more than one residential lot (by EA standard), they don't get to rent anything out. Their household and roommates, if any, extend their living spaces over all of the owned lots. So you may find your sims taking the laundry out of the washer on one lot and putting it into the dryer on another, for example. Or taking food out of the oven on one and serving it a different dining room. Some creative door locking techniques can be used to help sims you want staying in their own designated areas do so, but it's never going to be perfect.

When a sim owns a residential lot that another household is living in by way of NRaas SP (SP Money module), then they become the landlord and households living there pay rent to your sims instead of property taxes at the mailbox provided that you have SP's Unified Billing set up. Typically what happens is that sims can purchase the real property out from under the household already living there and compensate them for the real property sale.

There are a couple of other mods that change or help give the appearance of apartment living and ownership.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Apartment+Mod
http://modthesims.info/d/554197

It sounds like you have my Apartments & Roommates mod installed! Other Sims may -or may not- move into the homes on their own - it would depend on your StoryProgression settings.

There's a couple of situations going on. If you want to elaborate on each house and its occupants I'll try to explain :-)

Indeed I do. But it's been long since I played. More details would be appreciated of course! Though everything I read about this sounds complicated. (nraas, SP money module me has..etc)
lol I'm getting old huh...
Thank you both.

Okay, so Sims will move in on their own according to your Story Progression. If you have Sims you'd like to add yourself, you can either use MasterController > Add Sim (click on the house), or you can move them in from the Edit Town menu. If it's just one or two sims, I find Add Sim easier.

When it was talking about NPCs, it means, do those houses have Roommates Enabled. You'd have to play as that house, enable roommates, then choose the number you want. IF the house is a Residential lot, each NPC will add a fixed amount when they pay their rent every week. IF the house is an Apartment lot, each NPC will pay a proportional amount of the rent based on how many you have. Example: You have 1 NPC. Your family would pay 1/2 the rent, the NPC the other half. 2 NPCs, your family and each NPC would each pay 1/3 the rent, etc.

Even if my sim owns that house?...I looked in SP, and it is enabled for rent. I thought add sim would add a sim who then becomes the owner of that lot. So I could just use add sim, on that additional property and doing so...I end up with this sim as a renter?
It seems too easy..cool.

So! I'm going to have so much fun with this, if it turns out right...lol
This is what I ended up doing.
I sent my sim to her additional house. Then I enabled roommates service from there. I choose to have 2 of them. They showed up at her actual house though...So I clicked on the house I want them to live in and used Add Sim from MC. They didn't leave right away of course, so I clicked on them and using MC again, I choose Go Home.
That house is still opened..still belongs to my sims...and as soon as one gets out of bed, I'll get them 2 single ones..hehe. Let's hope, both roommates will get along! and thanks a bunch

Sorry, just saw this now.

No, that's not how it's supposed to work. You won't be able to reliably make those roommates stay in the additional house that way. Anytime they go home, they'll go back to your original house. You need to either Add Sim or move someone from Edit Town.

If you enabled roommate but them added them to the additional house, disable roommates in your main house or else they will keep showing up (game will generate new ones for you either at 9 am or when you switch households, whichever is first)..

Yes, I had to disable roommate service the day after I added them both to the additional house. Like you said, 2 more roommates showed up. I guess because my main house lost its 2 roommates to the other house.
But otherwise, they return to that house everytime they go home and all seems to be working. Now the pop up message I get is that 2 sims live in my additional property and I get money from them, and that they have 0 NPC roommates.

Now that I think of it...I could have totally bypassed the roommate service. Just clicking on that house and use Add Sim, would have done the job. But...enabling roommates will create new sims for that purpose, while adding sims will give you a list of already existing Sims in Town. Not choosing wisely, I could have break couples, families, by choosing sims who were already comfy in their own house. what a mess.
So either I'll stick with asking the game to create fresh sims for me, or I'll scan the town myself...looking for sad sims in need of a cool landlord.

Yeah, that's a good point! I really hadn't thought of that before, haha. There is some random pool of roommates where it draws the roommates from. I find them mostly annoying and usually pretty ugly, haha.

Yes, you're reading the messages correctly now :-) If you want those Sims to have roommates, switch to that household and activate roommates for them. Is the house you bought set as an Apartment or Regular Residential? The only thing it will change is if those Sims have roommates, how they collect rent from them.

It is a regular residential, I guess since it was a regular house to start with. Sims were actually living in it, but then moved out.
Ugly roommates huh? lol Well, something tells me that the game is most likely to pick from the premade sims...since one of them is a sim I made and saved to bin. Just his looks, of course. And the other one, a lady, is quite pretty, this time anyways.
So now, I'll go scan my Town, hoping to find a cool couple to fill my second additional house. Wish me luck. Thanks!

How's it working out?! Well, I hope! Have you had to fix any broken objects yet??

It is working fine, I am really enjoying this.
No broken anything yet...and i doubt it will happen as my sim kept upgrading everything to unbreakable. He is now lvl 10. So everything was upgraded before they started *renting* their additional houses.
A lot of mess though. lol One of the ex-roommates is a slob..that pretty lady?..and her housemate does not care about cleaning up either. So now, both add. houses have their own maid. This is something i was really happy about, I did not know that was even possible...but my sim went into each house, used the landline phone and required maid service. 2 maids comes in the morning, for both lots.
In the other house, I have a single lady with her puppy...(I found them living in a high raise building..poor dog! no outside) She seems to be thinking that her new & free male maid is awesome..cool.
Being a landlord is fun.

That does sound fun!! I always liked the idea, but with how many times I had to test it to get it working properly, it ruined my ambition to play it that way!

I never thought about trying the maid service that way, it's interesting that it works like that! Yeah, NPCs tend to be super messy. I would have switched to the renter's household and requested the maid, that way they can pay for it themselves! 😁

You say switch household a few times so far, and I've been wondering how exactly, you do this..in that context.
Would you choose...*move to this private lot* ? EDIT : Doh!..never mind...I just got it. lol (play as the renter the time it takes to require a maid..?)
The only thing I do is simply have my main sim inside said house. From there, everything my main sim does belongs to that said house...like the maid. No maid shows up at my main house..because he was called in another house. Having the renters pay for their maid is a clever idea. But in my head, the landlord should take care of it so the renters feel good. lol Anyway, this is probably how Alexandria would want it to be.

Literally go to Edit Town and "Switch Active Household" or else do it from MC :-P

But that works, too! I'm actually surprised that you are able to do that - I would have thought the phone menu for that would have been tied to the household, not the lot!

Careful if you use door locks - maids/service people won't go through them when locked unless you're using NRaas GoHere.

Ok thank you, noted. Though I rarely lock doors. I was pleasantly surprised too, about the maid. Then I thought..the gardener mod I have works exactly like that. You must request that service via landline phone...so yeah, landline phones must be directly tied to the lot it's on. What a joy...