Apartment Life-But Not Apartments

With AL came many new features including the much coveted "watch children" interaction from neighbors. I wanted all my sims to be able to enjoy this, not just those in apartments. So I created "gated communities" or basically apartments, that are actually homes.

Thus, the sims lease the homes and have all the interactions of apartment living, but also the suburban landscape. In addition to the new interactions, it gave another benefit of freeing up space in my small terrain for more community lots and thus more interactions with different social groups.

The Greymount Pointe community (above) is the luxury community. It's a 3x3 lot with 3 spacious (for my simmies) homes of 3+ bedrooms. The only have a small private back patio (2x5 tiles) but plenty of common grilling space and playground area. It worked out where all my hood council members live here (Kent (three story craftsman home), Herendez (yellow stucco) and Wilsonoff (beige brick)). Their previous homes were on 3x2 and 2x2 lots. They haven't lost any square footage in thier homes, but they're closer to neighbors now.

Apple's Landing also features a 3x3 lot, but four homes with fenced backyards and very little common areas (save a small area of toddler rides). Two homes are two story-3 bedroom, the other two are one story-2 bedroom homes. These homes are cheaper, but still mid-grade. Humphrey (2 story-yellow siding), Warwick (2 story-green siding) and Dawson (one story-beige siding) live here. Previous homes were all 2x2 lots, the only family that lost square footage is the Dawson, but thier old home was too big anyway.

For kicks and giggles, I'm showing the lower level residental lot. It's set up as attached townhomes, 3 tiny bedrooms (I have to use snaptogrid to place the double bed in the largest room). I just love the way they look, though the interior will kill me soon. So I'll probably revamp these with a better blueprint. Shazad and Sweeny live here. Thier previous homes were 2x2. Sweeny is really feeling the crampness of it all as they recently had triplets-yikes! But the IVF treatments and medical bills leave this as the only place they can afford at the moment.

The "gated communities" have all the same issues as apartments. The landlord complains about smells, you hear noises on the walls-even though they're not connected (huh?), neighbors can watch the kids and now I have all this free land space in the hood to build! Whoopie!!!

EDIT: Let's see some of your apartments!