hey everyone - long time no post!

so my sim lives in a legit apartment w/ the apartment door and all BUT the neighbors who have their own apartments w/ their own things keep coming up to mine and throwing tantrums outside the door trying to access things in the apartment…the very same things that are in their own apartments...so i dont get it.

i keep deleting them but they keep coming back. its quite disruptive. how do i stop this from happening?! i tried inge's apartment/security controller w/ no luck at all and im using the apartment door is the AL door that came with the game that only allows my sim.

note: the neighbors are sims i made and moved into apartments - they are not NPCs that the game created and moved into the vacant apartments.

Is this a custom apartment? It's possible to build an apartment that basically works, but with an interior portion that other sims perceive as being part of the common area. If the apartment is locked, they'll keep trying to access that area and being frustrated when they can't get there.

To test whether that's the problem, visit a different apartment in live mode and check whether a portion of the problem apartment is fully visible, rather than blanked out and appearing empty. If so, you'll have to move all the sims out in order to edit that apartment. Make note of the borders of the visible area, as the error will be on one of them. Certain fences/room dividers cause this problem, as do custom doors and arches that were created before AL.

If it's not a custom apartment, which Maxis one is it?

ah ok, so it IS a custom apartment lot i got from tumblr. (had the correct zoning on it) so i assumed it'd be ok. all the doors on the lot are not CC but i dont know which EP theyre from honestly. none of the units have special walls or fences either - as far as i can tell is all maxis content since im trying to be as CC free as possible - i definitely dont have any CC walls/fences/doors/windows installed at the moment.

i am not sure how to look for borders - they all look the same since they're apartments on different floors; there are none side by side so i dont know how to look for any borders or anything to see if its being viewed as a "shared" space since all the walls appear to look the same. i can try to get a few pics to show you what im seeing if that helps since im a visual person.

additionally, i did not happen to notice if this happened with NPC residents...it only started to happen when i moved my own sims in to the apartment.

Post some screenshots of the lot here. Maybe one of us will be able to spot the cause of the problem.

If the problem is a part of an apartment being perceived as common area, you won't have any problem finding the borders when you do the check from the other apartment. The space will be clearly delineated and you just have to make note of where it is.
If you downloaded it here, though, this is less likely to be the problem than if you'd done it yourself, as the uploader should have playtested it and other downloaders should have noticed a problem. However, it may be something that is triggered by something specific to your setup. Check the comment thread for the apartment, see if anyone else has had a similar problem.
When you say you moved in your own sims to the other apartments, do you mean you've replaced the social townies with custom sims, or that all the apartments are now occupied by playables?

i will! i go on lunch at 4PM (CST) and will post pics then for you all! thank you all for your help so far!

i should note here:
i have played with custom apartments in the past and have not experienced this before. HOWEVER, i never moved my own sims into the other units, they were always filled by NPCs made by the game and IIRC they never acted out like the sims i moved into this custom apartment. so its quite possible this issue has been around for some time but i never knew because the other units were "filled" by NPCs.

Maxis "great divide" fencing (actually just a strip on the floor, like you would put between carpet and vinyl) will do that. It's an odd thing anyway; put in a bathroom, sims will act like they are separated by a wall (even though they walk over it). Put around a crib, the baby won't be bothered by noise.

ah yea, i knew about the jankiness of the "great divide" i love that fence but i tend to steer clear of it in general. the fence is nowhere on the lot at all causing problems, i get rid of them when i see them. thankfully this lot came w/o! i wish that fence werent so jank honestly.

!! UPDATE !!

i was unable to get home for lunch because it picked up but i can send the lot that im using as an apartment. please note, that this lot comes non-apartment, i must have changed it over whenever i plopped it down into the neighborhood and then never played it until now bc the size is perfect.

https://modthesims.info/d/308754/ba...ng-3-units.html, my sim lives on the 2nd floor with the lil balcony. i did try locking/removing the balcony door but it made no difference. i should have mentioned that earlier - apologies.

so now, my concern is this lot was never made to be an actual apartment lot and to make it "so", you'd have to use a few mods for it - fine. BUT my sim is currently living on that lot, i can move the others out no problem. her apartment is fully decked out and i dont think the "stay things shrub" works if i put it in her unit, moved the sim out, changed the lot back to residential zoning and move her back in and just use mods to make it a fake apartment.

I think it's your stairs. Apartments don't like the stairs with the small landing between sets of stairs. It makes them consider the second floor common space. I had an apartment like that and I replaced the stairs with spiral stairs and that fixed it.

Yes, it will be the landing. What you will find if you try and place new furniture on the floor above the landing is the game will say you can't, because above the landing is not considered part of the same apartment but common area like outside. You may also notice the rent seems a bit low, and that because your sim isn't paying for that 'common area'.

Oh man that's hella lame. I understand why this lot has to use mods to "act" like an apartment. Dang, that breaks my freakin' heart but super super good to know! Thank you all for this update; I will suck it up and move my sim to a legit apartment building and make sure it doesn't act all jank - yanno, like good ol' maxis lots do.

We can most likely mark this as SOLVED!