Is it possible to get roomates without living in an apartment. My sim currently has an apartment but is earning enough to buy a house. Can she take on a housemate (not a bff with 100/100 STR/LTR) in her home and if so, since houses have no rent, how does the roomate contribute?

Officially, no. But you can make a house and then use a cheat to make it code as an apartment in which case they pay rent & can have a roommate. One of my poorer families did that & it worked out great.

Just make the house & before you leave the lot ctrl/shift/c "changeLotZoning apartmentbase"

You can only have one entrance/exit so if you have a back door, make sure your yard is fenced in.

I like this idea, but I need more info. Does the rent come to you? How does the game know how much rent to charge? Do you have to start paying rent on the lot yourself, etc. The idea of becoming a landlord intrigues me...

You wouldn't be a landlord; technically you would live in an apartment building, and rent an apartment, but there is just the one apartment - your house. You would have a regular townie landlord and the rent would be charged and paid in the normal way.

you won't actually be the landlord, the landlord will still appear as if you were playing an apt lot with more than one apt unit. The game will just treat the house as an apartment, it will decide the rent the same way it does on other apt lots, you won't be able to place things outside your apt without cheats, and the landlord will do the gardening and repairs, etc and if the house is already furnished you will have to use boolProp or another hack to keep the furniture there after you move in.

I tried to change the zoning on an existing Belladonna Cove home and it refused me. Does this only work for homes I create in the game?

If so, this isn't gonna work for me, as I am really terrible at building.

Make sure you changed the door to the apartment door and that any backdoor is fenced in. It should work on a pre-made house. I just tried it on the Contender house (after some modifications). Here's a tutorial EA put up - maybe it will help.

http://thesims2.ea.com/getcoolstuff...ng_tutorial.pdf

To change the house back to residential, you'll need to use these cheats:

boolprop aptsublotspecifictoolsdisabled false/true
boolprop aptbaselotspecifictoolsdisabled false/true

(true disables full build mode). Thought I'd share since I had to research how to turn the Contender house back to residential!

IT WORKED! The problem was I was using changelotzoning apartment, not changelotzoning apartmentbase. Now I have a nice rental up and running.

Awesome! I'm glad you're all set now.