Punishing game-loop?

[ImSeriously]

I just got the game, so there is probably something I'm missing. I bought my first property to flip (Abandoned House), and decided to completely restore it. After spending around $10,000 renovating everything, it auctions for only $2000 more than I paid for the house pre-renovation. It shows my "Renovation cost" is $0. Also, prospective buyers don't seem to notice at all when I do things like replace floors and walls, update light fixtures and appliances, install new doors, new bathroom, kitchen, etc. I even did new side paneling outside. I basically rebuilt the entire house! Honestly, the before and after is stunning, like an episode of some HGTV show. Not only does the game think I spent 0 dollars renovating, the buyers could not care less about the work I did. They only seem to comment on cleanliness and... not much else. After literal hours of real-world time, and $10,000 in-game currency, I get a pathetic $2000 "profit"? Except it's not profit, since that doesn't factor in my actual renovation costs. So really, by reviving and flipping a derelict house, I lost $8000. What an insult... What a slap in the face to conclude an otherwise extremely satisfying game loop. Am I missing the point, and you're supposed to lose money? I want to do it again because the process of transforming that ♥♥♥♥ abandoned house was superb. But now it seems like the game is failing to recognize my effort, and the reward is technically a penalty. Does it get better? Am I doing something wrong? Why isn't the game taking my renovation costs into account? Why don't the buyers care when I actually fix/update things? Sorry for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Thanks for any answers.

[hrvstmn31]

Calm down my dude and breath. This is not supposed to happen, I suggest contacting Frozen District with a support ticket. A new DLC was released and the game is in a pseudo beta mode at the moment.

[piranha]

That sounds very frustrating, and no, you're not supposed to lose money, even though it can happen. But the game also doesn't necessarily properly reward you for effort, unless that effort is directed first and foremost in certain ways. It will get better when you learn what works (or alternatively when you decide to stop caring and just decorate to your heart's content and share the screenshots with others). I made very little profit on my first sale, and 6 weeks later I sit on 7 million Euro. I rushed my last 15 sales because I just wanted to get it over with so I could enter freeplay before the Pets DLC dropped, and even when I flipped houses without doing anything much to them, I didn't make a single loss -- clean, fix the walls, install radiators and bathroom stuff; done. So cheer up, you'll learn to work with the constraints of the game in no time, it is really quite simplistic.

The buyers do care, but only in very specific ways, and they're kinda buggy to boot; the weighting of certain factors they allegedly care about isn't always correct, which is how you get a family of 5 bidding for a single room house with a sofabed and no bathroom or kitchen. Many care about cleanliness, yes. They care about the number and types of rooms in the house -- some want several bedrooms and bathrooms, some want a family room. Some care about the furniture you're using, whether it is Modern or Old-fashioned, Cheap, or Expensive. I am capitalizing these words because they're not inherent qualities we might assign from looking at a piece, but they're internal attributes, which we unfortunately get to often only guess at. Some care about whether there are carpets or plants or pictures, and how many. Bookcases are a hot commodity. Three of them care about the colour of the walls, but not very much (as in, painting the entire house green for Chang Choi just net me €100; not worth the effort). Some of them hate even a single toy or kids' furniture piece.

What they don't care about at all is your lovely sense of colour, how good your feng shui is, and whether you mowed the lawn. Heck, from my latest experiments they don't seem to care whether there are any doors -- and not in the sense of open-plan living being a thing, but including the front and back doors. They don't care whether you just left the ratty furniture you found in the place, or whether you updated every last thing. How you arranged all the bits and pieces, whether your kitchen obeys the triangle rule? Nope. A sofa and a coffee table make a living room, a sink and a toilet or shower or bathtub make a bathroom, that's all that matters. You get double your money back for installations, so ignore that Americans don't even do radiators anymore, and plop those down wherever you can.

So while you're trying to accumulate money, work primarily to please the buyers. I found it an interesting challenge to do that AND to make things look good while getting all the buyer achievements, instead of solely going by my own sense of style.

[tatiana]

From what I've heard, favourite colours mattered only when the game first came out - the devs seem to have removed this feature, maybe finding it too restrictive.

What Does matter is the number and types of rooms - the more variety the better.

Add bedrooms and bathrooms if you can - 3 is the best number.

Make sure everything is clean - that's something every buyer likes.

If the outer walls need finishing, do that too - painting is cheaper than panelling, but not as quick to do.

None of the buyers seem to care about radiators, the number of windows, or the condition of doors that aren't broken.

I'm not sure if curtains or paintings matter, but smaller accessories and decorations almost certainly don't. Toys might, because they make a children's room (you only need two toys for it to trigger).

Bigger homes sell for more money. More expensive furniture and installations add value, but don't overspend on smaller homes that are cheap to buy

[Emanouche]

Is renovation cost at 0 normal? Does it change anything/matter? Just came back after a long hiatus, and I've noticed that as well playing tonight. EDIT: I play on GOG by the way.

[The Infamous Cloaker]

You CAN lose money on a few renovations if you don't do stuff correctly. However, generally it is quite hard to actually lose money

[Emanouche]

Oh I see, so it basically means you didn't lose money renovating? It's a bit confusing.

[dark_haunt]

Generally speaking, the more you put into a flip in terms of both purchased items and time spent on a house, the more your profit should increase. However, the smaller houses are a slight exception to that. The smaller a house is, the less profit it usually makes. The usual ratio is roughly put $5,000 into a house, get back $6-8000, however that can change depending on how well you meet the buyer's needs.

I've only lost money on a flipped house three times. The only house that seems to have an occasional loss built in is the Moon House (when it first came out, it may have been changed since then as I've stopped hearing about losses there since then).

The $0 renovation cost is very strange and it sounds like the house may have glitched in some way. After a new DLC is a time when bugs and glitches show up in droves, so maybe try again with another house? Make sure you prioritise cleaning over renovations, by the way. All of the buyers will make much lower offers for dirty houses.

[tatiana]

Originally posted by ONSEmanouche:

Oh I see, so it basically means you didn't lose money renovating? It's a bit confusing.

Renovation costs don't include the cost of furniture or accessories - just the stuff you do to the walls, floor and bathroom fixtures. So in those houses which only require a clean the actual renovation costs may be zero.

[Playzr 🐵]

They can be really inconsistent. I've decorated small houses, added walls to create extra rooms that would otherwise be one room, kept any furniture that looked alright, made 100k (after negotiation). Then I've decorated a huge 12 room 2 storey house and made a lot less profit. I mean it doesn't really make a lot of sense. I think if you're replacing something nice with something just as expensive but different there isn't really much profit, but a run down old place it's good to sell everything and decorate it from scratch. You can probably squeeze in extra toilets and a sauna by dividing a room. Even the garages you'd overlook, you can easily build some walls towards the back and gets some extra rooms out of it. A living room can lose its classification as one if it contains something like a computer then it becomes an office and your clients that want a living room don't see a living room anymore. Make do with what's already there if it isn't too shabby. I tend to sort the furniture and items by price descending and try to pick the most expensive stuff as long as it matches. Check the buyers to see what they dislike. Sometimes it won't make sense saying it's missing something that it definitely has. You can negotiate more money and I find they seem to accept when you pick the middle amount in the middle of the negotiation bar. I once went over half way and they said no so you're stuck with the offer for all clients (can't negotiate one at a time). You can squeeze maybe an extra 15-25k out of them but it's a gamble. You shouldn't really be losing money or making so little. Oh and you gain experience and can unlock perks that increase the speed and reduce the cost so over time it'll be easier and more worth your time. Completing the odd jobs is a good way to learn the different aspects and upgrade your perks.

[Emanouche]

Hey, thanks for all the answers! :) Yeah, I just did a bunch of wall renovations in that last house, and it said 92$ for cost of renovation... I don't quite get it, but it's not a big deal. They've improved the UI to the game so much since last time I played, it's such a joy now, becoming very addicted. haha