Homes
People who live in your tower are the quietest money you will ever make, and the easiest to lose. A home earns once or every month instead of every day, but its residents are home every evening and every weekend, so they notice everything: the noise from the bar next door, the walk to the lobby, the wait for the elevator after a long day.
Condominiums
Section titled “Condominiums”A condominium is sold, not rented. The first family to move in pays the full price at once, and the condo is theirs. You get no more money from it after that, but you keep its residents, who count toward your star rating and spend a little in your shops.
The catch is the buy-back. If the owners grow unhappy enough to leave, you buy the condo back from them for what they paid, and it goes back on the market. A condo you sold for $150,000 and lost a week later earned you nothing. So build condos where people will want to stay: away from noisy floors, near a lobby, with good elevators.
Classic Every condo sells to a family of three at the price you set on the old four-step ladder.
Modern A condo sells to a household of two to five people, and a bigger household pays more for it (a five-person family pays five thirds of the asking price). Bigger families also wear out faster when something is wrong. An unsold condo costs you a small holding tax each month, 1.5 percent of its asking price, so don’t overbuild. And now and then a family simply moves away for work, with a couple of days’ notice; you buy the condo back as usual and sell it again.
Studios and apartments Modern
Section titled “Studios and apartments Modern”Modern adds homes you rent instead of sell. A studio holds one person, an apartment a household. Both pay rent every month, so they earn less up front than a condo but never need buying back: when a renter leaves, the room simply waits for the next one.
Like condos, studios and apartments are built above ground only. No home of any kind goes in the basement.
Rent above the default wears a renter’s mood down a little every hour, as it does for an office. Studio dwellers shrug off noise better than anyone else in the tower, which makes studios the right thing to put near a busy floor.
What residents want
Section titled “What residents want”| Problem | What it does | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| No way to reach a lobby | The rating falls every hour | Give the floor an elevator, stairs or escalator back to a lobby. |
| Long elevator waits | The rating slides while the waits last | More cars, more shafts, or a sky lobby. |
| A noisy neighbor | Offices, shops, restaurants, theaters and other noisy venues within 21 tiles on the same floor | Keep homes on floors of their own, or put a stretch of lobby between. |
| Too far from a lobby | More than 7 floors from a lobby or sky lobby | Add a sky lobby every 15 floors. |
| Too few shops in reach | Fewer than half the shopping they need | Build food and shops they can get to. |
| Too far from a stair or elevator | Apartments only: more than 79 tiles from the nearest one | Add a shaft nearer. |
| Garbage piling up | From three stars, more people than your Recycling Centers handle | See Services. |
| No parking Modern | Homes held back, filling slowly | One space per two condos, three apartments or six studios; a Metro halves it. |
A rating that drops all the way means notice: two days, and then the household leaves. Fix the problem before then and they stay.
Classic Noise holds a home’s rating down but cannot empty it by itself.
Modern Noise keeps wearing until people leave, but nearby amenities fight back: a Fitness Club, Daycare, Aquatic Center or Party Hall within a few floors lifts a condo’s or an apartment’s rating and raises the ceiling noise puts on it (studios don’t feel them). A Nightclub does the opposite at night. While you place any of these, the game shades the floors they reach.
- Homes go high. They don’t need shops on their own floor, and the view is better up there.
- Keep a lobby or a sky lobby within seven floors of every home.
- In Modern, inspect a home to see which amenity, if any, is helping it.
See also
Section titled “See also”- Tenant ratings for how ratings rise and fall
- Money for when sales and rents land
- Hotels, the other way to fill upper floors