Sorry for that outburst. It was late, I was tired, and the retirement "gang" had just struck again (I had found and changed the money threshold from 100,000 to 100 millions at that point) You are very helpful, as always, igazor. The issue is that my current game on epic timescale has been going for 414 days, if the scrapbook is to be trusted. This means that quite a few residents have lots of cash on hand. Adjusting the tax rate at this point will probably result in some over-correction. I can see that my main family definitely needs a cap (what happens if you reach 100 millions?). I had not enabled the "money" module after I had experienced what it did in my Twinbrook game, where I had first tried it. As I said, I love the inheritance mechanics, the way it makes residents buy vehicles (although I have to find a way to block all those moving vans and hover cars they seem to prefer) and the basic idea of providing rental lots for those in dire straits. When Lucy Ferne, the Twinbrook kingpin, started "helping" the downtrodden, it was kind of endearing and good for a chuckle. When Mary Baker started buying out all the large villas of her neighbors, including my family's, less so. When I noted that this basically blocks the handling of sims from the "edit town" screen, I was stumped.

I had to wrap my head around what "ownership" actually means. The lot and the house my family paid for is listed as "not owned by anyone". I can see the programming reasoning behind this, but the wording doesn't really make much sense, until you see what happens next. At least it's very clear to me that only one household can own a house, and the only house you "really" own according to the mod is the one you buy as rental property. As a consequence, you cannot really own the house you live in. You can own your neighbor's house, and they can own yours, and at this point the houses are safe from being bought by anyone. Must be some tax evasion scheme.

As I just started with rotational play, I'm not even aware of how the normal in-game "property" is handled. Each active household seems to be able to invest in and buy any rabbit hole/community lot they want, but I haven't looked at whether that's actually taken away from the current owner. I still have much to learn here.

But thanks for the help. I will adjust the "Lot Options". I want to have maybe three rental properties in town as alternative for those who can't pay their bills, but that's about it.

@Chain Reaction: Thank you. I think that would be a good idea.

One of the things that makes these scenarios more confusing (I prefer to look at it as more fun to figure out what in the world is going on) is that sims do own the lots they live on only until such time as a landlord buys it out from them. "Not owned by anyone" means not anyone "else." But when tenants they still own and pay taxes (bills) on the purchasable items that are on the lot, what they are paying in rent is only for the real estate property itself. In other words, if they buy new cars and expensive toys, those belong to them and not the landlord. At the moment I'm not sure where the line is drawn between the real estate and the ownable property on a rentable lot. Seems like walls and floors are the landlord's, but not as sure about appliances and hot tubs for example. My best guess at the moment is if the item cannot possibly be put into a personal inventory and carried around, then it must be part of the lot.

Sims cannot have more than §99,999,999 in cash, the game won't let a balance go higher than that. There's probably a similar cap on net worth.

Sounds like you are on your way back to where you wanted to be then, with only a small number of lots to be designated as rentable for the rest of the town to "fight" over who gets to buy them first instead of the residential real estate market being a wide open free for all.

igazor wrote: ↑

November 4th, 2019, 12:30 am

twice I've had sims' lots sold for negative values

That should obviously not be happening. Very odd. I'll have to look into that one.

I should probably add that I got everything set up as I wanted in the end, to bring this to a conclusion. It all worked nicely.

I really like what the money module does. Unfortunately, my game is so close to the memory limit that I had to deactivate this module again. For some reason, saving with the money module adds about 400 MB RAM usage, while without I usually end up with about 250 MB more (first save, considerably less on repeat saves). This meant for me that I could only save once per session, which I found too little. I guess I'll have to wait until I start a new game to be able to use it again.