Is there a way to do that when you build a house?
I can't see that anywhere and it's a bit annoying if you try to make starter homes for example, have to go out to the neighborhood too see...

I would like that...

I've always maintained a "Contractor" family using the Motherload cheat for just this kind of thing.

But when you kick out the family then all furnitures disapears..??? I would like to fully decorate with at least bathroom and kitchen but that's not possible... I don't understand why they didn't fixed so that the building cost shows in buildingmode without a familly... annoying... :-/

This is what we use....

dum dum dum dum!

Collections for. (me, at least).

I made a collection of essential items that add up to appx 15,000 simoleons. This way, I know that I have 5,000 for building.

yeah, but you have to pay for the lot as well...

Is there any way you can see the net worth of a family while they are in their house? I can only seem to see their disposable cash

Both Carrigons bottle and Winters Mailbox hacks have the option to see what the family's total worth is

Edit: I jumped in game to make sure and I was right. With Wintermuteai1's Mailbox hack, in the second set of choices you will see "display lot value", in Carrigons Memories in a bottle you will see "check wealth" . For any who are interested but don't know where to find those, they can be found in the beta testers forum
[ Edited 18-11-2004 07:07PM ]

Yihaa! ;-) Found a solution now! You can have a sim on the lot when building and when you are finished you kill the sim, after he/she is dead - erase the urn/tombstone (and other stuff if you want that) and save the lot! That works and all furniture are still in the house! :-)
I haven't tried it out but I guess that you can also lower the house cost if you play the house for a while before killing the sim..?

What if you use the "find my own place" in a newspaper to get rid of that last sim? If that works, at least he gets to live to start your next new house.

You can't do that if there is only one in the house, you have to go out to the neighbourhood and move the sim and then all stuff is gone... Only if there are 2 or more sims you can choose move out on the comupter...

Well you can always just move them out somewhere else with SimPE *shrug* or have another sim, say on an empty lot, who has a good relationship with them move them in with them, etc.

I just don't like to kill sims.

The option to let another sim move the sim in doesn't work, then all the stuff goes away... And I don't use SimPE, I'm a bit afraid of making a mess for my self with such a program... *lol*
Only negative I just found out is that if you delete walls or some other stuff in build mode you don't get all of the money back... :-( In buy mode it works fine.
I don't like killing sims either *lol* but I don't have a problem killing one I don't play with, so create a sim that just stands on the lot while I'm building and then "disapears" ain't no problem for me... ;-)

Well everytime I have a sim on another lot move in a sim, it leaves the furniture on the vacated lot. *shrug*