Nowhere to live: the housing update

TL;DR — Housing got real. You can finally rent — five tiers from a $4,800 flatshare room to a $150,000 castle. Losing your home (sale, divorce, orphaned, bankrupt) now stops the year until you decide: buy, lease, move back in with your parents, burn $60,000 up front on hotels — or, if you're broke, sleep rough and pay in health. Marrying a homeowner moves you in; graduating nudges you out.

Until this week, OpenLifeSim had exactly two answers to "where do you live?" — with your parents, or in a house you bought outright. Between them sat a silent third state the code politely called on your own: no home, no rent, no consequences. Sell your house, lose it in a divorce, bury your parents — the game shrugged and charged you nothing. A sixteen-year-old's housing ladder went straight from the family table to a $200,000 mortgage.

That's fixed. Losing your home is now a moment.

The fork

The instant you have nowhere to live — you sold your home, the divorce court handed it to your ex, your parents died while you still had a room there — the game stops and asks. Not with a toast. With a full-screen decision that blocks the year until you answer it:

• Move into a property you own — landlords with a portfolio just pick one.
• Search for a house to buy — off to the property market; buying while homeless moves you in automatically.
• Find a place to rent — the new one. More below.
• Continue living with your parents — only offered while at least one of them is alive.
• Live in hotels this year — $60,000, paid up front, deliberately last on the list. It buys you a year of thinking about it. Nothing else — the same question returns with the new year.

You can close the window and go browse. But "Live another year" just opens it again. The year waits until you've actually got the keys.

Renting, finally

The gap between the family table and a mortgage is now a lease. Pick what you're looking for — a room in a flatshare ($4,800 a year), an apartment, a house, a villa, or, if you must, a castle at $150,000 a year — and sign one of the listings:

Rent is charged every year before your loans get serviced, so a lease you can't afford can absolutely sink you. Landlords nudge the rent up 1–3% a year. Categories aren't just flavor: a better place means a better bed (more time points every year), and a house or villa has the workspace your freelance career needs.

And yes — you can rent a castle while owning nothing else. We ran the numbers. It's a terrible idea. It's in the game.

Rock bottom

Hotels are means-tested — the front desk runs your card, and if $60,000 isn't there, the option simply doesn't appear. What's left is the street: free, one year, minus ten health, minus fifteen happiness. The question comes back next year, and the year after, and every year until something changes. Health doesn't go up on its own.

The street never shows while your parents' door is still open. Swallowing your pride is free.

The details that bit us

A few design notes from the week, because this devlog is about the math:

• Hotels charge up front now. The first version billed at year-end — and a broke player's negative balance fell into the same debt-forgiveness branch as everyone else's, which made luxury hotels free for the destitute. Playtesting finds a way.
• Marriage finally houses you. Your spouse's home becomes the marital home if you don't own one. The divorce court already knew this — "the family home goes first" was in the settlement code all along. Now the loop closes in both directions.
• You can rent and own at the same time — but only on purpose. Moving into your own place mid-lease pops one question: hand back the keys, or keep paying both? Keeping both is allowed. Silently draining $14,000 a year because you forgot is not.
• Graduation is a nudge. Finish school, college, or university while still at the family table and the question opens once: time to move out? "Stay with your parents" is always an acceptable answer. The game just wants you to say it out loud.

The housing update is live on the test server and lands with the release. The waitlist below still means one email at launch — nothing else, ever.