Lot Values affected by money module?

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by raeholl » September 10th, 2019, 12:51 pm

Hi all. I'm not sure how this is happening, but ever since I started using the money module the lot values of residential properties in my town have started to change randomly and always to a lower price. It's pretty drastic, something that was 16k is 200 simoleons and other large discounts. When I installed the money module I implemented several different taxes for different groups in my town, I'm wondering if it has anything to do with this? Or is it something to do with depreciation?

Also, is there any way to set the value of a residential lot in master controller or otherwise? Thanks in advance. :)

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by igazor » September 10th, 2019, 1:15 pm

A lot's value is the sum of the value of the (empty) lot itself plus all of the objects that are on it at the time the evaluation takes place. Yes, depreciation happens. But another issue that causes lot values to change erratically is that if a vehicle is in use or in a sim's personal inventory at the time that the valuation takes place, then it won't get counted as it would if it were parked on the lot.

However, I do not understand how a residential lot can change from a value of §16,000 to §200. The latter is what I would expect to see for a vacant lot that has nothing on it but a mailbox and a municipal trashcan and maybe some rocks and weeds but no building or other more expensive objects. The former could be a small, modestly furnished starter home or it could again be an empty lot with a car parked on it, if it has a parking space. Or perhaps a small LN style apartment unit.

May I ask where these valuations are appearing? Is it possible (just guessing here) that sims' homes are being purchased by others who are thus becoming their landlords and the value of the lot itself is being shifted away from the resident to the new owner, for which rent will be paid? SP Money does have that function and it can surprise us at times when sims start becoming landlords/tenants rather than own their own residences.

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by raeholl » October 12th, 2019, 11:07 pm

Completely forgot I posted this, but thank you for such a quick and helpful answer! It is a perplexing issue. So, once I downloaded the money module I did quite a few things to my town. I have the sims broken down into economic castes, and sometimes there are other castes laid over them, but I mainly changed the tax / rent rate for each class and also enabled the land ownership. Consequently the higher class families of my town buy smaller lots to rent out, many of which are small starter homes. But I've seen the drastic price drops in larger estates, too, and many of the culprit lots have no owner listed when I look... From what I've seen, I think the valuation change is happening when families are moving. I also toggled a lot of the money settings for when families split and move, but I'm having trouble understanding how this would affect the price of a lot.

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by igazor » October 12th, 2019, 11:39 pm

raeholl post_id=69448 time=1570936022 user_id=20121 wrote: but I'm having trouble understanding how this would affect the price of a lot
So am I, actually. Would you be able to provide us with some screenshots that show a built-upon lot that is clearly much more than a 10x10 with rocks and weeds on it being valued at something in the order of §200 (or some other unreasonable amount like that)? This may be a glitch that most of us are just not seeing or it may be intended somehow, but it might help if we can narrow down the source of the bogus evaluations. By provide us with, I mean host the screenshots on a third party image hosting site and embed them or provide links to them within this thread.

If that doesn't get us anywhere, I may ask for a copy of your saved game. This issue sounds interesting (not in a great way for realistic gameplay) and much worth figuring out.

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by Turjan » November 3rd, 2019, 10:22 am

If I'd take a guess, what you see is some other resident buying your house from under your posterior without asking. That's one of the most annoying aspects of this mod. If you change the setting of "inactives can handle deeds" to "false" in the general settings, I noticed this doesn't filter down to manual castes and has to be repeated for each manual caste separately.

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by igazor » November 3rd, 2019, 2:00 pm

Turjan post_id=69818 time=1572794522 user_id=20191 wrote: If I'd take a guess, what you see is some other resident buying your house from under your posterior without asking. That's one of the most annoying aspects of this mod. If you change the setting of "inactives can handle deeds" to "false" in the general settings, I noticed this doesn't filter down to manual castes and has to be repeated for each manual caste separately.
Wait a minute, which forum am I on? Oh..er, hi there and welcome to NRras. :)

Afraid you have the wrong General Option there. What Inactives Can Handle Deeds does is allow inactives to collect the rent/real estate entitlements on deeds they already own. If you switch that off, it doesn't stop them from purchasing or selling real property. The option I believe you want is Lot Options > Household: Rentable. Or it might be Sim Options > Money: Allow Purchase Deeds but that works the other way around to allow or prevent sims from purchasing deeds and I believe this one is intended to allow or prevent the investments in community lots, not residentials. Either or both of these should be available under Town Options, no?

General Options do not filter down, they are more like master on/off switches for the functions they govern and they do not have direct counterparts on the hierarchy of inheritable options. it's Town Options that do so.
Town > Lot > Household > Caste > Sim

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by Turjan » November 3rd, 2019, 6:19 pm

Thanks for the welcome.
I'm afraid to admit you are right there. I still haven't found the correct settings to correct that madness. Those inactive sims are still buying lots left and right in my game, and I haven't found the correct setting yet to stop that insanity to spread. Really, I think that mod has the wrong default setting, as this messes everything up. I find it endearing to watch the kingpin to make half or the town his dependent populace. but it's annoying to watch from the other side of the fence.

I had disabled the money mod in part because I really despised this part of the mod, but I wanted to reintroduce this to take advantage of the inheritance mechanics. Anyway, I think the part or the mod that concerns the buying of rentals is screwed up. The residents of my retirement home buying the lots of my rotations caste is all sorts of [messed] up.

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by igazor » November 3rd, 2019, 7:03 pm

Turjan - I gave you what I thought was the correct setting you were after to shut that feature down. Just verified it in-game. Sorry, guess I didn't state it clearly enough.

On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > SP > Town Options > Household: Rentable > False. This is the setting that will flow down to Lot Options; from there, any exceptions you wish to make for certain lots to be rentable again can be made on the Lot Options level.
(SP Money module required)

The options that would flow down to sims in castes would concern their ability to purchase real estate, not the ability to have their own lot purchased out from under them. But if you make all of the lots in town not rentable to begin with, then there won't be any on the market to purchase and approaching the question from that direction, that of the lots not the sims living on them, is what has worked for me.

You may have a point about True being not the best default setting at the Town Options level for many players. But from the sound of it, the households you have in your world might have more than the otherwise expected average values for cash on hand. It actually takes a household to be pretty well off before SP Money will start pushing real estate investments on them although the thresholds for that are also adjustable. Now that brings us to SP > General Options.

NRaas > SP > General Options > Options: Money > Options: Purchasing > Purchase Rental Lot Minimum > (default = 100000). There is a similar option to cover rabbithole lots on the same menu, Inactive Purchase Deeds > (default is also 100000). The amounts here are how much more than the cost of the lots to be purchased that the household must have in cash in order to even consider doing so.

That means in order to consider purchasing a let's say §75,000 residential lot if you have left any on the market for them to even do so by way of Town/Lot Options, then an inactive household must have at least §175,000 in cash. If your town's households are typically carrying that much cash on average, then I would say that perhaps the General Options setting might need to be adjusted upwards. The point here is that when an inactive household acquires that much in spare cash, they would like to have something to do with it other than buying more and more fancy cars. But with SP Money and leveraging its ability to tax sims who have higher net worth at higher rates than others sims, I don't see very many households in my worlds passing into the zone where they would be wealthy enough to be making these investments. That, of course, will also depend as much on their starting points as their weekly cash flows.

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by Chain_Reaction » November 3rd, 2019, 11:40 pm

I will make a note to set the town options setting to false by default if it's agreed upon that is the best thing.

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Lot Values affected by money module?

Post by igazor » November 4th, 2019, 12:30 am

I dunno. It's possible some players like the default setting and others might not even realize that residential lots can be purchased and rented until these things actually happen. That's why I never indicated the need to add the Lot Options protection to the list of things to do to play rotationally on that FAQ page, I mean it's not like the sims losing their property ownership are suffering a monetary loss since they are paid for the property sale, they just no longer have the home equity that they once had.

But the reason I did end up switching that off at the Lot Options level for all of the households I play is that twice I've had sims' lots sold for negative values, meaning they paid the new owner to take the residential lot they were living on off their hands and were then subjected to negative rent going forward, meaning they may have gone into debt as a result but were getting paid rent by their landlord for the honor of living there. Whether that turns out to be a good deal for the former property owner now tenant or not depends on how long they have to live or how long their surviving household ends up staying in that situation because once it's walked away from, just like walking away from/terminating any lease, it's all over. I figured if the real estate closing process was going to keep goofing up like that, it would at least be better to keep it away from my rotationally played sims. In one case with the negative property value/rent, the new landlord and tenant happened to be siblings both in inactive rotations at the time, so it's not like it totally goofed up my game or anything unfriendly took place but it was rather confusing to work out what had happened all of a sudden.

But besides that, if the feature is causing more confusion or annoyance than it is making players happy I would agree that the default on Town Options doesn't need to stay. :)

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