After my sims move from their old, small, home into a new one, can they rent out the old home? Or are the only options to sell it or leave it unoccupied?

If possible, I assume then they could buy all the unoccupied houses in town and place them for rent; even buy the vacant lots, build on them and put them up for rent? And will NPCs moving into a house provide any furniture themselves or only make use of what is provided in the furnished version of the house? (i.e. if I leave them a sofa and table in the living room, would they ever purchase a TV or chair?)

The only oddity I've noticed here is that when my sims return to their old home (to tend a garden which is still flourishing) the contents of the refrigerator are shared with that in their new home ...I wouldn't want my tenants to have access to my well stocked larder.

Is that No to the ability to rent, No to NPCs making purchases, or No to both?

No to both.

Thanks. So I can just sell my old property (no doubt while I cannot make money with it, the game will count it towards my assets and increase my weekly bills accordingly).

umm.. I haven't try this, but maybe you can enable roommate service and place your NPC roommates to your other house (assuming your other house is next to your current house) by setting their bed and using door lock so they will lives there and can't come to your current house..

Thanks. I believe that would require University Life, which I've no interest in installing. FWIW, I typically play only one household per game, with no more than three sims; anything more becomes too hectic for my impatient old posterior to deal with (I resort to unacceptable language just trying to get two of them in the hot tub together ...it's like herding cats)..

Yeah. You'd think with the addition of roommates and being able to purchase additional houses, the game would also have introduced the possibility of being a landlord..jeese.

Within our NRaas Suite, StoryProgression Base Mod + Money module, does provide the ability to rent out such acquired property, but needs to be bought as a Rental Lot.

After all these years having these mods installed, I finally had some time to test the feature out and it works just like when you are in University World, but with the ability that you can be the land owner ;-) While EP UL isn't at all required (....i think....), but do think EP WA is required.

Unfortunately it isn't a loose feature within our suite and you are required to install atleast those two mods, which in turn can be very resource consuming on a low end PC. If you are interested here's some documentation on SP's Rental Properties: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryPr...%20Money#Rental

Thanks; I thought I had read somewhere this was possible, but the replies here, and years of computer games, also meant it was possible that person was talking through their hat.

My system is certainly old and past its prime (like me), and it has been upgraded as far as the mobo will allow, but it does run Sims 3 with Ambitions and Seasons reliably (those are the ones I would deem "indispensable"), though any additional EPs would no doubt stress it. I would like to add Pets, but the rest of the EPs either don't interest me at all (LateNight, Superstitions) or I'm completely ambivalent about them; given the resources i would add WA simply because it seems so much CC requires it. But, having reached the stage where I visit my doctors more than I do my family, a new computer is not in my immediate future.

That link was interesting, don't know how I'd previously overlooked it - I'm running a dozen or so of Twallan's mods.

I've put that note in my comment, just as a general warning if others tempted to try it out and noticed their gameplay isn't that smooth anymore. Not much of a reflection on your own system, which I have no specs about. And you already using SP, so I think you are aware of the perks that comes with it.

Anyways, the link I gave you said the ability having multiple lots were added in the patch of EP WA, so it might not even require to have EP WA installed if you don't want to. If you haven't already, try installing the SP Money module alongside with SP's Base mod and see if you can buy a Rental Lot (SmartPhone> Real Estate & Travel> Purchase Rental Lot) without the EP WA and see if it works.

On adding EP Pets, that's one of biggest offender that drains the most of your machine. Though a wonderful EP to have, IMHO.

No offence taken. I usually make such comments to forestall recommendations that "you need to run this" or "...install that", and I'm thinking that's all well and good ...if i had a quad core 4 gig cpu with 8gig RAM, etc.

FTR, I have Vista 32, Athlon 64 x2 3.0gig, 2gig RAM, and an HD5670. Obviously the RAM is my bottleneck, Sims3 typically runs about 93% RAM usage with the two mods I have installed; hitting 95% usually means an "Error 12" on saving (though I've found waiting til 3AM game time, after Overwatch does its cleanup, before saving usually works).