I'm doing a Build a City challenge and I'd like to know if sims can buy property on university campuses and build spending their own money, rather than having free uni lots. It looks like there is a sim logical mod that might work for buying lots to build dorms, but I wasn't sure about the commercial lots on campus.

I know there is a mod to have your university in your hood. I don't use it, but it might be an option to you.

If a YA has enough money, and you place an empty lot in the neighborhood, the YA can move in and build normally. Once that YA moves back to the hood, though, he can't go back, and non-YAs can't visit University hoods unless invited to visit or on an outing/date with a YA.

To build a dorm, it's necessary to build it as a residential lot, then change the lot zoning. It is a very bad idea to change the lot zoning of an inhabited lot. Therefore, you could have someone build a lot while he was residing there, in the usual way; but he'd have to move out before it could become a dorm.

this might work out for me. Most build a city challenges require sims to pay tuition for college. I want the option to have YAs build a lot instead of paying for tuition.

I had my legacy kids build the legacy Greek House, which started as just lawn furniture.