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Sims 3 Buying Out Properties and Becoming a Business Partner
This feature of the Sims 3 must be one of the least often utilized ways of making money. Your Sims can invest in all the businesses in town if they have enough cash. Because the option to buy in doesn't appear unless your Sim has enough cash on hand, it may go completely unnoticed. In this guide, we'll learn about investing and just how much money a Sim can earn per week if they take the time to buy all the businesses in town.
How it Works
When a Sim has enough money on hand, they will see the option to buy in to a business partnership with one of eleven red buildings in town. The only four red buildings that cannot be purchased are City Hall, the University, the Police Department and the Military Base. These are government buildings. So, click on one of the buildings in map view, pick partnership and your Sim will head there and invest. They'll then get a weekly payment, every monday at 9am.
Payments must be collected by your Sim, so it does take a bit of time to run around and gather all their money, but it usually takes less than an hour per building. Thankfully, if the weekly runs to collect money bother you, you'll like knowing that the profits do accumulate over time. Your Sim could go once every few weeks and know their money is waiting on them. With multiple deeds, you can click the stack in the inventory to collect all deeds at once, and see exactly how much money is waiting to be collected. This is much easier than clicking the individual businesses.
Ownership
Once a Sim has partnered in a business, they can 'buy out property'. This means they'll get all the earnings instead of a part. This is nearly double income for most buildings. Of course, you'll need the Sim to have enough cash on hand for this option to appear as well. Full ownership is preferable if your Sim isn't nearing death, and especially so if you are playing a game where the Sim will leave a legacy.
How Best to Start Investing
I'm no mathmetician, so I won't be giving you a magic formula. The truth is, every Sim's income is going to be different, and how much cash they have on hand to start will vary as well. I think a good rule of thumb for the first investment is to partner in the most expensive building you can afford, as the most expensive buildings pay off the fastest, as we'll see. Use your income from your Sim's job or skills throughout the week and reinvest into buying more partnerships. You'll want to go partner in all businesses first before owning any of them. Parnerships pay off much faster than ownerships. It will also make the ownerships easy to afford.
Building a Legacy
While your first Sim might not enjoy all the fruit from their business investments, their legacy can. When a Sim dies someone else will get the deeds. You can choose which Sim will hold them by dragging them from one Sim to another (they can be found in the inventory screen). So, a good businessman can leave a legacy family with millions in Simoleons over time.
Selling Deeds
You can sell the deeds to your Sims' investments, be they partnerships or ownership, but that doesn't mean you should. They always sell for less than the cost of initial investment. While an ownership may at first glance appear to sell for more, it doesn't when you add the cost of the initial partnership. So, no business should be sold until at least three weeks of earnings have been collected, so that the total amount collected and sell price are more than the amount paid.
I only include that information because it is a feature of the investment system. I do not encourage Simmers to sell business deeds because in the end, you'll always take a loss because of future money you're not collecting. The game doesn't work like real life at all, where a profitable business could be bought and give the owner years worth of revenue. Since the money saves up, it would be better to make less trips to pick up the money than to sell in every case.
The Data
Let's get to our list of businesses you can buy, along with how much they'll cost and what your Sims will earn. Included is the amount of weekly payments you'll need to receive to break even. Use this list to make decisions before your Sim sinks their money into a business. Preferably, you'll want to eventually buy all of them as they are all lucrative over time, even the cheapest. It only takes an hour to collect an $850 payment, which is double the best career in the game's hourly wage.
Note that the Businesses you can buy in both Riverview and Sunset Valley are the same. We can assume this will hold true in future towns. Their names are different, but a Diner is still a Diner.
| Business Name | Partner Cost | Partner Money/wk | Break-Even Payments | Owner Cost | Owner Money/wk | Break-Even Payments* |
| Diner | $6,000 | $850 | 7 | $18,000 | $1,800 | 13 |
| Bookstore | $7,000 | $1,000 | 7 | $20,000 | $2,000 | 14 |
| Supermarket | $7,000 | $1,000 | 7 | $20,000 | $2,000 | 14 |
| Bistro | $12,500 | $2,100 | 6 | $25,000 | $3,000 | 13 |
| Day Spa | $15,000 | $2,500 | 6 | $35,000 | $4,000 | 13 |
| Warehouse | $15,000 | $2,500 | 6 | $35,000 | $4,000 | 13 |
| Office Building | $18,000 | $3,000 | 6 | $40,000 | $6,000 | 10 |
| Theater | $18,000 | $3,000 | 6 | $40,000 | $6,000 | 10 |
| Hospital | $30,000 | $6,000 | 5 | $75,000 | $12,000 | 9 |
| Stadium | $35,000 | $6,800 | 5 | $80,000 | $13,000 | 9 |
| Science Lab | $40,000 | $7,900 | 5 | $100,000 | $15,000 | 9 |
*Includes cost of partnership
So How Much Does the King of the World Make?
Investing in businesses is a stellar way to make money in the Sims 3. Adding up all the weekly earnings of ownership in all businesses in town we get a total of $68,800 a week in earnings. Nearly $10,000 a day. This is enough to support any family in the Sims 3. They won't even need to work once all investments are owned!
