House 006. I am not doing the extreme start, so I had $150,000 to start with. You can also "recruit" people to move in with you and force them to help make the money. That's a bonus, but no one makes any freaking money. The only official requirement is that it must have 8 beds (one must be a double) and a bathroom. So, I am actually building this one myself instead of piecing rooms together from the gallery (I hate building).
Some of the alien plants (which I make sure every house has a surplus of), make HUGE money. The orange ball ones can bring in $5,000+
Toddlers can be so hard. I only have had one house with toddlers (5), but even then I don't think toddlers were put in until the end of that house. I don't even remember them that well.
I am a little crazy with the gardens. It's to the point that some of the gardens take all day to care for, this is particularly a bad idea when only one sim is controllable. I have issues with my willpower. I just plant and plant and then wonder why the hell I have a forest.
I'm not sure if you use mods or not, but I just got mine for the garden. I had to have it and I'm not sorry.
Gardening I use the yellow version, which makes me pretend to myself that I'm not slightly cheating. That way your uncontrollables can do the garden (I do not use the one that allows them to harvest it though).
House 3: OMG. OMG. That sucks royally! Poor Reggie. I weep for your poor sims. It's so hard when it seems everything just spirals out of control. You were so close too! i make a save at the beginning of every house. We will NOT talk about how many times I had to delete a house and start over. I am crossing my fingers for house 4!