I used to always use Maxis-made houses because I was too lazy to either download or make my own, but now I mostly make them for myself. I've never been great at neat architecture or interior design, so I mostly keep my architectural anomalies to Strangetown. xD

I like to build my own, but it always takes me so long. There is a certain satisfaction to playing in a house you've built from scratch though!

I have downloaded a few lots - with most of them I'll then go in and alter bits to my own preference. Often I like the look of the outside and the landscaping (my own landscaping needs a lot of improvement!) but when I look at the inside it usually doesn't really suit the needs of my families.

Love looking through the downloads at the houses others have made, just to get inspiration for my own builds...then go and make something that's a bit of a mix of everything I'd just been looking at!

I like trying to build interesting houses or buildings I've seen - the universities near to Little Carping have several imitation Arts and Science faculties based on real ones. I sometimes use floor plans but often just try to get the look of a house right from pictures. Here's an interesting house I'm in the process of building (actually a street as an apartment lot).

I download some houses because there are some amazing houses available to download that I know I would never be capable of creating, but I do like to build my own sometimes too. It's just that it takes so long to build my own and downloading a beautiful house from the thousands available only takes a few minutes! It also depends on what kind of mood I'm in. Sometimes I'm more interesting in building a house and sometimes I more interested in a family and their story, so I opt for a downloaded house so I can go straight to playing the family.

I'm terrible at building. I download all my houses. The only houses that I've ever actually built myself are the legacy houses and those look like someone glued giant boxes together.

Oh, no, Maxis-made houses fail. xD
All of the Maxis houses I love, I can't play because they crash my game.
Maybe you could teach me a thing or two, because I am no good at building... at all!

I love it when a Maxis-created house says "2.5 bathrooms." Yet you can have a third full bathroom with a little reorganizing.

I just recently learned about keeping roofs intact with that little "lock" icon (it's in the auto-roof section).

I try to do houses in one set (like the DeBateaus' I like to do in Socialite) but sometimes I'll have a general theme, and different rooms might have another theme--like a teen's room might be done in Surfer, and the house in general done in Club, but the bathrooms done with floors/walls/items from Kitchen & Bath Stuff. Houses in my Riverblossom Hills are all done in Country, but I try to mix and match for variety so no two houses have the same decor.

I prefer to download because my building skills are pretty bad and my decorating skills are worse, so a premade and decorated lot is great.

So far to date I've only downloaded one lot and that was for an item of cc that was no longer available from its original site. I generally prefer to build my own houses, commercial lots, schools, etc. I get a little too OCD in the creative process and will create anything that would fit my neighborhood or serve some particular purpose. So far I've created 157 different buildings for my game. (and it still ain't enough!)

I do somewhat of a combination of both. I look at the floor plans of the houses available for download, then I model my own houses after them. I alter the houses slightly for my needs though. I usually keep the same exterior but alter the interior significantly

I do both. I build a lot, particularly if I'm making a neighborhood with a cohesive theme or architectural style. And sometimes I build just for the sake of building, because I enjoy it. Often, I try to recreate houses I've seen. Sometimes I try to build really complex ones that I find on floor plan sites or in the billions of floor plan books that we have lying around, relics from when were going to build rather than buy a new house.

But sometimes I just want to be lazy and play a family right away and not have to build something for them, and for that, I have a stock of downloaded houses I like, along with keeping copies of everything I've built for future re-use. When I download, I prefer lots that don't have a lot of object-type CC. (I'm OK with getting walls and floors and even some build stuff like nice windows and doors with a lot; I'm not generally into CC furniture and deco and such.) And I prefer small. 2x2 lots that use the space well are my favorites. And I think I have all of plasticbox's Newbie Road houses. They're convenient to use when I have a new household and I just don't feel like building something for them. I get them started in a plasticbox house, and then I build them something that suits them when I get to know them better and get a feel for how big their family's going to be. (There's nothing like cramming a family of 5 into one of the smaller Newbie Road houses! *laughs*)

I'm probably one of those rare few that actually likes the in-game homes. I can't build(all my houses are basically a bunch of boxes together and some cheap furniture thrown in - building and decorating houses is the most tedious to do for me), but I find a lot of houses I've downloaded I have a really hard time maneuvering around in. It's like they've packed so much stuff in so many rooms that it just distracts me. ^^;

I usually like to build my own houses ... well .... mostly. Many of my houses contain one of a set of wonderful underground garage templates that is ... somewhere ... on the MTS network. I think this one contains the links I've used. I don't use the 2 X4 download. I tend to favor small- to-smaller-medium lots (no larger than 3 x 3):

http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=99315

I use the three templates so often that I've lost count. So I suppose that at least 33% of my "self-built" houses are actually "semi-self-built". And that might be a conservative number! I thank the creator of these templates constantly.

Like another poster here, I get inspired by certain real-life house plans (I have a bookmarked site with RL floor plans), and build from there, altering the original plans quite a bit. Nevertheless, my houses can tend to be somewhat boxy, and I would bet you a Simoleon that MTS would turn them down flat. I want ROOM, darn it! Function over form, admittedly to excess. A designer, I am not.

Sometimes, I like to fool around with a certain feature that uses cheats, such as a sunken living room. I just want to see if I CAN do a certain thing. If I like the result, I'll package the house and re-use it a couple of times, altering the floor plans a little. One or two attempts at that feature is quite enough for me!

I find that with several pre-made houses done by others on websites, the layout isn't quite to my liking. Certain rooms, for instance, may be way too small or oddly-shaped. Everyone has different tastes. This is, indeed, just me.

Quite a few of my houses are pre-made downloads, though. If a house has a fascinating, yet functional layout, or if it's a certain ethnic style that I really like, I'll download it, being reeeeallly careful about custom content. One lovely house gave me agida for days because it kept causing problems, and I couldn't figure out why. It turned out that the troublemaker was a certain light used in one room, and even replacing it didn't work. Just one light caused that much trouble!

I rarely download furnishings in a house. I'll strip those out before downloading, and if I like certain pieces, then I'll put them in a special folder, but only if I'm really crazy about them. My Downloads folder is large enough as it is, though others would consider it rather small (1.5 GB).

Maxis in-game houses do not appeal to me. I rip them apart and re-do sections constantly.

I prefer to build my own homes, but I tend to have patience issues at the same time. That and I have a problem planning ahead when it comes to building new lots.

I wouldn't mind building houses and sharing them with the community, but I need to figure out my screenshot software. Building houses is one of my favorite aspects of Sims. In fact, a family friend used to help me build wooden houses for my Barbie dolls when I was a child!

I find that I've become extremely fussy about any house that I download, and that when I do download one, I'm more than likely to strip it and rebuild it to my tastes. Usually it has to be a fairly small, compact house to get my attention. Anything over 2x2 will not interest me.
I've been converting community lots to residential, and using some lots meant as those for large family houses.
I used to really be bad at building, but my skills have improved with a view to the playability of the house.
I don't use building cheats at all-because knowing me, I'd forget which one I was using and completely blow it up. The only one I ever use is the MOO, and that one is a much abused cheat.

I like downloading houses, as mine tend to look like boxes.

I build my own, but I do download a few here and there. Although I have a hard time downloading residential lot, but I love downloading useful and pretty community lots. And I actually like Maxis-made houses, especially Pleasantview's and Strangetown's houses, but the problem most of the houses made by Maxis have, is that they are too bear and sometimes bit empty. I love cluttering the place up a bit! :P

I really can't stand the cheap-looking wood floors. My issue with a lot of Maxis houses is, no room if you want a family/no room for skill-building objects, and floors that really don't match the walls. I'm fussy like that.

I dont post here, ever, but I do come here A LOT for CC. However, I have never downloaded a house b/c it seems there are little to no people on here that can build a proper house. That's my opinion of course, dont anyone go getting mad over what I said. There are many houses that look great from the outside, but the floor plans are outrageous. The most popular characteristic I see on most of the houses here that irritates me most is the enormous bathrooms people make. At least half of the houses I look at have bathrooms that are as big, if not, bigger than the bedrooms. A standard bathroom should be 2x3 tiles which would make it almost perfectly proportionate to a real life standard bathroom. But no, I find bathrooms that have so much space just between the fixtures you could fit an entire dining room set in there. There is sooooo much wasted space in quite a few houses I look at as well. Don't make the house so big if you cant use the space. It will save money and not look so weird. I've seen hallways that are 4-6 tiles wide, upstairs balconies that are completely pointless, and, again, bathrooms big enough to park a car in. Also, box houses might not be the prettiest, but at least the rooms can be normal shapes. But, you can still build houses with unique exteriors without having tiny and oddly shaped rooms. 4x4 should be the smallest bedroom. Any smaller than that and you are in decent bathroom size dimensions.

sorry for my rant. Also, I guess I should mention, I dont actually play the game. I just build houses. Maybe I am missing something from not playing the game that warrants all this lunacy in house building. idk

^^^This!!!^^^

I find it highly amusing how many people complain about how their sims all flock to the bathrooms; yet the bathroom is the biggest room in the home. Ok, maybe not the biggest, but still way too large. My trick was to convert bathrooms to "French" style baths as much as possible. Although this style isn't strictly French, it's the country I've seen them in this design the most. The toilet is in its own 1x2 space, with its own direct entry. The tub and/or shower and sink are in a different 2x2 room. Do NOT have one room accessable from the other!!! Sometimes I'll have a 2x2 powder room with a toilet and sink, just to make guests happier if they want to wash hands after.

I will go smaller on the bedrooms, some are as small as the bath in my starter homes.

I no longer download homes that don't have a top-down view of each floor, no matter how amazing the look outside, or how good individual rooms look in pictures, because of the above flaws.

I also always seem to be tearing down excess walls in the few homes I do download. Did you know that rooms with multiple angles get a better room score? So, if you can combine rooms by removing walls, or parts of walls you can have a space your sims will be much happier in. (This only holds for Sims 2, not Sims 3).

I like a 3X3 bathroom myself...sometimes I like to have a separate shower and tub. Like with the Country collection...it has showers, and I put in those and a tub that matches the bathroom's decor--put the toilet, sink, and shower on one side of the room, the bathtub on the other. Sometimes your Sims like bubble baths. Sometimes I want to do bathrooms with my Kitchen and Bath stuff, so putting in that colonial-style shower/tub sticks out like a sore thumb.

I like houses that have enough living space for a couch, loveseat, TV, piano, and a game or two, master bedroom and nursery downstairs, and extra rooms upstairs.

If I may show off the O'Mackey residence (Gabe and Alexandra's) in Riverblossom Hills:

The front of the house:




The back with a pond and a greenhouse (I typically include these in all lots in this 'hood)



Ground floor. Notice I put Gabe and Alexandra's room next to the nursery, and that there's plenty of room for skill-building objects and toys:



Second floor. This has Jules' old room (she's in college right now), her little brother Jonathan's room, and an extra room. I tend to build for multi-generational families; Leod McGreggor's daughter Fiona will eventually marry into this family. And I just now noticed that I need to send Alexandra to fix the shower....

I can't build at all, so I mostly download. If I'm in the mood though, I can build a pretty decent house.

i tend to download a house cause i'm pretty bad at building them myself (lack of creativity when it comes to houses, CAS is where i'm most creative) but i always make tweeks to them before i move a family in cause i like to have my house ready decorated according to the ages and genders etc..of the sims i plan to move in

If I may critique Alaxandra's house a bit.



all the black is wasted space IMO. You could cut the house width by about 6 tiles. Move the dining table where the red arrow points. Add more kitchen counters/cabinets where the white line is in the kitchen. All the stuff that is covered by black could still easily fit in the remaining space. Also, there is no need for 2 hall baths right across from each other like that. Rearrange the circled one so that the door to it is in the top bedroom to create a master suite

Here's what I would do to take the 6 tile width off the second floor. Green are baths and red is beds.



one bath is a hall bath at the top of the stairs. The second is a Jack and Jill Style bath shared by 2 bedrooms, each with their own sink area, then a shared toilet/tub/shower area. The bedrooms are still a good 5x4 size and bathrooms have plenty of room for the essentials.

This is just my inner architect coming out. Not intending to offend anyone. Just trying to help people acheive more realism in their sim homes.

If that was actually one of my houses I was building, it would be much more difficult as I like to be very realistic and add garages, basements, and closets for all bedrooms to all my houses.