Hear me out lol. I've poked around in a few different places and it seems like this may not exist and I'm just going to be SOL but it never hurts to ask SO

I'm looking for a hack/mod that lets ME not the game set MY preferred sims as tenants in an apartment.
I have sims that I'm actively playing in said apartment lot (EA apartments, nothing modded, I actually don't mind how they set up apartments...its TS3 that needs help) and there are tenants the game spawned to live in the vacant apartments.

My issue: I have a certain aesthetic for this hood, and they straight up do not match it even though I did give them a makeover.

Things I keep doing but are getting tiring: Controlling the sim/adding them to family, making them over and setting them back as uncontrollable to live their lives or using Dizzy's mirror hack. Depends on how speedy I feel like being.

Things I'm trying not to do: Make a new family, move them in to take up a room.
Why I don't want that: I'd like to keep them as NPCs/townies, not just a family I made and moved them in. Cause these are just the filler sims the game creates but when I click on the apartment lot from the hood view I want just the family I am playing to appear and be available. No one else.

Example: I have my sim that I'm actively playing, rad. There is a neighbor sim that the game spawned to fill the vacant apartment across from the one I'm playing. I don't like this sim even though I made them over to fit my games aesthetic - all in all, I just want them replaced with a different sim altogether - preferably one I created and set as a townie instead of the game generated one.

I'm sure this is totally dumb, but there are some pretty ridiculous things people have asked for hacks/mods for in the past so I don't really think this is too far fetched for this community after all.

I don't know of a hack but you can manipulate who moves into apartments. You need the townie-as-apartment-neighbour hack (Cyjon, I think). What happens is the game then uses the latest townies you made as apartment residents. So the process is - build apartment, make new townies to fill it, then move someone in. With the hack, the townies you made should be the first to move in. It's how I got my drug addicts, oiks and street walkers into a run down apartment lot I made for Sirencester. It's also how I made apartment neighbours for Polgannon that weren't created by the game and therefore odd in some way. It does mean you have to plan who lives there though before you build. If you start moving people in and out, all bets are off.

Or you can use No Townie Neighbours and nobody but sims you move in will live there. https://www.modthesims.info/d/511564

If you want a certain townie as tenant, you can move them in, so making them playable. Then you can move them out and let them hire the apartment of your choice, and just never play them again until you need them.

these are all great suggestions!! ahhhh thank you all so much. im going to test play these and see which i like best! yayayayayayayayayayay