Our May survey intended to learn about households, and if your home is rather newly established with 2 stories, 2 bedrooms, 3.7 seats for watching tv, 20 windows, 2 entrances and 1 bath room which has a very poor room score, then you are a quite normal Sim!

We got enough submissions to draw a pretty clear picture, and the surprises were few. There seems to be a tendency of Sims either living in a rather small house with few rooms, or they live in quite large houses with plenty of everything. The strange thing is that there is hardly any households in between the small and the huge. This theory suits with many of the following questions/results.

I must apology that there has not been time for a more complex study than to list the clean results. On a future occasion, we might dive a little deeper in this material, looking for patterns while combining some of the questions.

Here is what we got so far:

Number of household members
A typical Sim household consists of 2 adults (26%) eventually having 1 child (additional 19%). Also households with just 1 single Sim, or 2 adults with 2 children seem to be quite normal (13% each). 

Days since move-in: 
44% of the households which answered our survey had moved into their home less than 11 days ago. This tells us that many of the Sim households are pretty newly established. But it also tells us that the majority of the households are older than 10 days, here of did 34% say they are older than 50 days.

Income: 
The income is not a very significant fact, because you will find many 2 days old households with income of more than §1000 per day, which is not really telling much about the household, except that they "know their way around". Any ways, the average income is §560 per day per household, but any income between §250 and §1000 a day seems quite normal. We noticed that 17% has no income at all, but we do not know whether this is due to temporary and unforeseen circumstances or whether they retired because they saved up money etc.

Net worth: 
For the households' net worth, we figured it made no sense analysing the details, as there are so many wealthy but recently established families. Instead we decided to check how many households have a net worth lower than §50.000. It turns out to be 34%, which is a higher number than we actually expected.

House's size (sq.ft.):
Do you live in a smaller house? There's no reason to feel bad about that; 23% of the households resides a home of 1001-2000 sq.ft. That's the same frequency as for the entire rage 2001-4000 sq.ft. What we think might be a pattern here is that those who are not satisfied with less than 4000 sq.ft. will not stop building until they reach the 7001-8000 sq.ft. size (16%). There are houses of all sizes contributing to our survey, but rather few at 5001-7000 and 8001-9000 sq.ft.

Rooms: 
Most house sizes seems to be represented in our survey, except houses with less than 4 rooms. This is no surprise, as most houses include a bathroom and a bedroom, and if the living room and kitchen are separated, that already make 4 rooms.

4-5 rooms are more common than 6-7 rooms. Only 16% has a house with more than 10 rooms.

Stories:
If our survey is representative for the typical households, 2 out of 3 houses have 2 stories, giving every 3rd house is on just one floor.

Staircases:
Most houses with 2 stories (75%) have just 1 single staircase connecting the two floors. 25% do have 2 staircases, mainly being the larger houses (10 rooms), but not necessarily the home to more than 2-3 Sims.

Bedrooms: 
A typical household (45%) has got 2 bedrooms, probably one for the parents, and one for the kid(s), eventually for two adult house mates. 23% has 3 bedrooms, while 19% has only 1 bedroom. Having more than 4 bedrooms is very rare.

Kids per bedroom: 
It's common that each child have it's own bedroom, this includes 79% of the households that include children. The remaining 21% are 2 children sharing one room.

Bathrooms: 
Whether your household has 1, 2 or 3 bathrooms, it's pretty common, although 39% have only 1 bathroom, which is a higher frequency than we expected. 32% have 2 bathrooms, 23% have 3 bathrooms, and only very few have 5 or even 6 bathrooms.

Number of TV seats: 
How many can sit and watch tv at the same time? Sims are willing to stand while watching tv, but we know you would easily get physically tired, and that is something we Sims do not like at all. In an average household 3.7 Sims can get seated in front of the tv set. 55% have 3 tv seats, while 14% have 2 seats, and another 14% have 5 seats. Hardly anyone have 4, or more than 5 seats.

Kitchen size: 
We asked for the size of the kitchen, by counting floor tiles. 35% of the households have 21-30 kitchen floor tiles, which seems to be the most common. But 23% have 31-40 tiles, and 19% have 11-20 tiles. Even kitchens larger than 41 tiles are pretty normal (16%), while kitchens less than 11 tiles are rare. 

Number of kitchen windows: 
As the kitchen is a room where Sims spend quite some time, we thought the number of kitchen windows would say something about often used rooms in general. We know we are taking a risk here, because some kitchens are built as a part of a hall way, living room or dining room, benefiting from light from windows in those other parts of the room, so the submitted number of kitchen windows might not be accurate. 

Our survey shows that Sims really like a lot of daylight into the kitchen; 30% have 6 windows, and another 20% have 4 windows in their kitchen. 13% have 5 windows. If your house has less than 4 kitchen windows, it's pretty rare, although a total of 20% have less than 4 windows.

Total number of windows: 
Naturally this question is relaying to how large the house is, but actually the average house has got 20 windows (32%), quite less than we expected. 16% have less than 11 windows, while 13% have 41-50 windows, and another 13% have 51-60 windows. More than 60 windows per house is pretty rare, also 21-40 windows seems to be rare. This must be the same pattern as we saw above, Sims live in small to average homes after getting settled, or they live in rather large houses if money is no question.

Entrances: 
When more than 2 Sims share a house, we know it can be wise to have more than just 1 entrance, to avoid chaos i.e. when they run off for school bus or car pool. The survey shows that 90% have more than 1 entrance. More precisely, 52% have 2 entrances, 10% have 3 entrances, and 19% have 4 entrances. Again, this might reflect our theory above, Sims either living in small houses, or in quite big houses.

Paintings worth more than §500:
A few artists have contacted us about this question, they liked to know what Sims answered, which might reflect how popular expensive paintings are.

The result follows the either small or large pattern; Sims have either 0-2 expensive paintings (55%), or they have 5-6 expensive paintings (23%). More specific; 26% have 1 painting (most common), and 19% have none at all, while 13% have 5 expensive paintings.

Fireplaces: 
Fireplaces are known to start fires, and we were curious to how this might effect the number of fireplaces in the regular Sim's home, as fireplaces also sort of express wealth because they are expensive and take up room.

Only 16% have 2 of them. The remaining splits equally between having 1 fireplace (42%) and having no fireplace at all (42%). No households claim to have more than 2 fireplaces.

Phones: 
Although a few households seems to have 1 phone in every room, most households (30%) have just 1 phone, 27% have 2 phones, and 23% have 3 phones. The remaining 20% have 4-9 phones.

Lowest room score: 
It was no surprise that the bathroom most often is the room with the lowest room score, this is reality in 68% of the Sim homes. Few of the bathroom facilities give any room score at all, and besides most of them are more or less dirty most of the time. In 16% of the homes the kitchen has the lowest score. It should be easier to improve the kitchen score by those involved, unless there are constantly dirty dishes and a full trash can. A bigger surprise is it that in every 10th home the study has the lowest score. How would anyone manage to concentrate in such a room?



Thank you to all who replied to our survey. Future surveys will be announced here.