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You won’t be much of a landlord without any rental properties inThe Sims 4: For Rent, an expansion focused on buying residential lots and earning a passive income through tenants. With two residential rentals in Tomarang and plenty more available with a few slight tweaks, there are plenty of opportunities!
The process of buying a residential rental property in the For Rent expansion is fairly straightforward, but with so much on the menu, it can quickly become a bit cluttered. Use the guide below to help you buy rental properties and get them all set for your future tenants.
Updated on June 27, 2025:Now that we’re a month out from the launch of The Sims 4: For Rent, we’re circling back to our guide on how to become a landlord to add links to things we’ve published since launch, clarify a couple things, and tidy up our formatting.
How To Buy Residential Rental Properties
It’s easy to purchase a residential rental property in The Sims 4: For Rent to get the ball rolling on allyour landlord dreams!
To get started, you’ll need touse the Business tab on your phone, the yellow briefcase icon where you’d take a job or register to freelance.
You’ll see the option in this menu toBuy a Residential Rental.
When you select the option to purchase, you’ll be brought to anoverworld screenthat looks a lot like the travel screen, where you’ll be able toselect the residential rental property you want to buy.
Thelot typewill need to be set toResidential Rental, or you won’t be able to complete the purchase. This can be changed by loading into your desired lot theManage Worldsmenu.
Properties you can buy as rentalsare labeled on this map with ahome and key icon.
When choosing a residential rental, youcannot buy a property that’s already owned,either by another landlord with multiple units or any individual family homes.
When you hover over the lot, you can seehow many unitsit has,details of each unit (such as current residents and what they’re paying in rent), and thecost to buythe property outright.
As you may expect,residential rental properties arenot cheap! In essence, you’re buying multiple homes at once, so expect to spend a pretty Simoleon, but being a landlord can also bepretty lucrativein itself.
In Tomarang, there aretwo rental unitsalready placed in the new world, but one of them is already owned when you begin the game.
you’re able to either choose topurchase the unowned property(Sungai Point in the Koh Sahpa neighborhood),build residential rentalsof your own on an unowned lot, orplace premade lots from the gallery.
Tomarang, the vibrantSoutheast Asian-inspired worldincluded in The Sims 4: For Rent is currently theonly worldthat already has residential rental properties.
These settings can be manually adjusted for other properties in other worlds (or other Tomarang lots you’d like to take over) from the Manage Worlds menu if you’d like to become a landlord elsewhere, too.
How To Manage Residential Rentals
Managing Your Property
In The Sims 4: For Rent,Residential Rentals are classed as stores your Sim owns, which means you can access all their info via theStore Ownership tab.
After purchasing a rental, you’llautomatically be brought to the rental propertyfor a close-up look at the new building you own.
Here, youcan see into any vacant unitsand make changes in Build/Buy mode, but youcan’t see into occupied units. The higher the value of the unit, themore you can chargein max rent for thenext tenant.
You can also change the lot traits or assign lot challenges from this menu. You’ll also see a list of suggested furniture to help boostthe unit’s rating.
There does seem to be a bug that occasionally locks rent at a wildly cheap price - below §10, usually.
To fix this, you’ll need to manage the lot while it’s unowned from Manage Worlds, briefly change the lot type, change it back to Residential Rental, and then purchase the rental lot from your in-family gameplay after.
Once you own a residential rental property, be sure tofill any vacanciesas soon as you canto keep the fullest revenue stream coming in from your properties.
Maintenance And Emergency Events
Owning property isn’t always a cakewalk, though - sometimes,things at your rental units go wrong, and it’s up to your Sim as the landlord to do something about it.
Classed as separate events dependent on how complicated the issue is to resolve, bothmaintenance and emergency eventsrequireaction from your landlord Sim, lest their ratings begin to go down due to neglected maintenance.
Whether you choose to have your Simaddress the problems themselvesby going to the lot andfixing the problem on-siteor simply opt forsending professionals to your rental property to handle it for youis up to your Sim and their own Handiness skills.
Handling both types of events are two prominent portions of theFive-Star Landlord aspiration.
Just beware that failing to address some of these issues will lead tomold growingat your rental units, which docksplentyof points from your unit scores.
