As long as no playables are in, you can bulldoze away. The apartment neighbors are already in your neighborhood and will reappear as needed, no harm done.

I think she's talking about building while they're all still in there. Using the dorm building cheat.

@PeniGriffin - Oh really? Well if we are on the same page then that's great! I mean even though I have the Goodies in it, so far my game hasn't wonked. But i've only recolored objects, painted walls and floors, and added one or two items.

@maxon - Well I'm sort of talking about that but Peni's answer helps me a bit too. Any advice is welcomed. Also I'm willing to see more peoples posts about this.

Thanks so for you two!

if you are using a cheat to alter an apartment it only alters it for the family you have loaded. So say you put out some patio furniture in the common area with the cheat, it will only show up for the family you have loaded while you place it. If you load up another family in the complex it will vanish like you never placed it. It's also known to be a buggy cheat. Doing that can make other apartments show lit up.

If you want to bulldoze and replace the lot, move any playables out first.

I wouldn't change/arrange anything if it's occupied by anyone.
Move everyone out, then change the lot zoning to residential.
Make all the changes you want.
Put it back to apartment zoning.
Move in whoever you want

....funny, I just redid this one myself. Took the pictures today ~ should have it uploaded soonly

@joandsarah77 - Oh really? Whoa I didn't know that! Thanks for telling me that. Next time I'd go in I'd be like. 'what the hey, hey happened to my stuff'?

@Catherine TCJD - Really? Well I'll do that the next time I edit another pre-made apartment with a family already in it. Thanks!

OK so here's what happens "behind the scenes" when you play an apartment lot, as far as I could figure it out.

When the apartment is empty with no playables living in any of the four slots, you can go in and edit from neighbourhood mode directly. Here, you're editing the "base lot" of the apartment. At the moment this is all that exists.

When you move in one family, the "base" lot gets copied exactly as it is and placed in exactly the same spot as the base lot. It is invisible in hood view, so it doesn't clip into the real base lot and look strange. Say this is the Goodie family. Under game behaviour, you can edit everything inside the Goodies' apartment. When you use the cheat, you can edit the items in the common area too. <i>But,</i> really you're only editing the invisible copy, called the "apartment sub-lot".

If you decide to move in another family to a different apartment lot, let's say you move in a family called the Baddies. The game has to create another copy of the base lot to move them into, the second sub-lot. Because it's taking a copy of the base lot, and not the Goodies' sub lot, you don't see any of the changes to the common area that the Goodies made. Indeed, the Baddies can also mess around as much as they like with cheats with the common area, and the Goodies won't see any change either.

The curious behaviour comes when Faith Goodie visits Mr. Baddie's apartment. There is some kind of magical coding which allows everything inside the Baddies' apartment to reflect the changes made by the Baddies while everything outside of that area remains as the Goodies usually see it. And when a family moves out entirely, although their furniture usually resets, I believe walls and flooring are copied from the sublot to the base lot overwriting them for future copies.

It's very clever but quite complex, with a lot to potentially go wrong. And bear in mind any area totally enclosed by fencing inside an apartment will be considered cut off by the game and therefore treated as common area, including floor-level dividers which are designed to be stepped over. Make sure you leave a gap of one square if you use these.

Whoa that gives a very good explanation of everything! I think I am beginning to slowly understand it more and more. The next time I play (which probably is in a little bit) I'll check everything out and if it does what you say than I'll move the playable family, The Goodie's out of the apartment and edit it from there. I dob't mind doing it again since it was basically just recoloring objects, applying walls and floors and minor furniture. But thank you for the help too!