DESCRIPTION: Let Prof. von Ball inspect your lots for known problems before deleting a lot that could destroy your neighborhood.

Update with minor tweaks to the messages given.

The Lot Inspector is Prof. von Ball, the volleyball used by crazy Knowledge sims, and can be found in buy mode under Miscellaneous/Miscellaneous. To use it simply click on it in the catalog and a report will be issued. You don't even have to place it on the lot. This allows it to be used on vacant lots so you can check them out before deletion. Fixing problems usually requires a sim to be present, so it is best to use it before a family moves out.

Prof. Von Ball reports on the following problems:

• Urnstones (meaning urns and tombstones) - Deleting lots with urnstones on them means deleting sims, and deleting sims is a Very Bad Thing that will destroy your neighborhood. You will need to move the urnstones off the lots either in a sim's inventory or by clicking on the urnstone and moving it to a community lot. If you are using base game or University only, you have no way of moving urnstones off lots so you can't safely delete these lots.
• Offworld Loiterers - Sims are sometimes generated invisibly on your lot. For example when you call a sim, that sim is actually created but not put into the world, and then removed when the call is over. Sometimes offworld sims get stuck and not removed correctly. Use the batbox (ffsdebugger from MATY) to "Nuke.../Offworld Loiterers."
• Owned Businesses - Sell any sim-owned businesses before deleting the lot.
• Loan Jar - If a loan jar with a positive balance is found you will be warned. This is not a dangerous issue and the lot can still be deleted safely. If you do so then the loan, but not the money, will disappear. This may not be a bad thing.

DISCLAIMER: Prof. von Ball is not infallible. He can report only on known corruption issues. Even if he finds no apparent dangers, there may be other problems we simply haven't discovered yet. Deleting anything in this game carries risk. Again let us thank EA for creating such a crappy, crappy game.

LAST UPDATE: April 14, 2012

REQUIRED EPs: None (maybe -- see Known Issues)

COMPATIBLE EPs: All configurations from the base game through Apartment Life.

KNOWN ISSUE:Per the Sims Wiki: Users who do not have Apartment Life or Mansion & Garden may find that the object doesn't work correctly for them. To make it work, press "Ctrl+Shift+C" to open the cheat box, type in boolProp testingcheatsenabled true, and click on the Lot Inspector. An object error dialog with "Bad gosub tree number" should pop up - click on "Cancel" to ignore the error. The inspector should then file a report. I don't know for sure if this is true or not, since I have AL, but I may investigate it one of these days.