Residency
The property where you have taken residency provides your housing points.
Citizens pick a primary residence to determine which deed will provide their Housing bonus. Each deed can have any number of residents, and those residents will share in an Experience boost based on the quality of the house and number of occupants.
As the number of occupants increases, the occupancy penalty increases. At small numbers of occupants (1 or 2), there is virtually no penalty, and citizens can effectively cohabitate this way and share in the benefit of a well-stocked house. As the occupants increases beyond that (5 and above), the penalty becomes more steep, eventually topping out at 99% when the house is too overcrowded.
However, the 'diminishing returns' rate of rooms is favorably affected by occupancy (because three bathrooms is overkill when you live alone, but great when you have roommates). This means that you can overcome the penalty by building a larger house, and duplicate rooms will inversely affect the occupancy bonus.
To become a resident of a property, click the name of the property (visible on the popup status panel when you're in the property). From there you can become a resident (if you own the deed) as well as invite others to become residents. These other invited citizens may then join as a resident through the same interface. You can even invite groups by specifying titles or demographics, allowing you to create housing for special classes of citizens (new players for example). You can also set the max number of occupants, to ensure that residency managed this way (by inviting large groups) doesn't result in overcrowded housing.
Permissions for Residents
When a citizen becomes a resident of a property, they will gain a special set of permissions, even if they don't otherwise have access to the property, known as Resident Rights. These rights are the following:
- Pre-furnished rooms supported: Residents can access all world objects on the property as consumers.
- You can move in your own stuff: Residents may place objects anywhere on the property (but not blocks).
- No stealing the furniture that came with the place allowed: Residents may pick up world objects only if they originally placed them.
Rent
After inviting residents, deeds can be offered for rent to allow automatic rent collection agreements between citizens. When renting a property, the tenant gains residency on the deed and receives all associated housing bonuses and permissions. When offering a property for rent, an hourly rate is set with an optional move-in fee. The agreement can be customized to determine if offline hours will require payment.
Available properties for rent can be found in the Economy Viewer. Once accepted, the rent will have a locked rate until either party ends the rental agreement.