History Main / AHomeOwnerIsYou

* ''VideoGame/TheSims'', of course, but you're pretty much required to build a house if you want one. In ''The Sims 4'', you can take the easy route and use the online content-sharing feature to plop down an entire house instantly.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'':
** In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'', your home is where new party members come to call and where you can [[ArbitraryHeadcountLimit swap them out]].
** In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'', you can stay at your home in Aiedo for free instead of staying at an inn. You can display the ridiculous souvenir crap you can buy at a tourist trap in the first half of the game.
** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' gives players the option to rent and furnish an apartment of their own.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' has a run-down house you can buy and then shell out tons more cash to upgrade. There's not much to do there besides sleep and display/store a handful of weapons and shields as trophies; however, it's probably the player's first glimpse of how the game averts the series' usual MoneyForNothing.
** Buying the house and all the upgrades also unlocks the "From the Ground Up" side quest line where you help one of the workers, Hudson, build Tarrey Town in the Akkala region by bringing him wood and merchants whose names end in the suffix "son". Completing Tarrey Town also unlocks another resident merchant, Grante, who sells rare armor pieces you may have missed as well as the Hylian Shield.

Compare HubLevel and RenovatingThePlayerHeadquarters.

* ''VideoGame/TheSims'', of course, but you're pretty much required to build a house if you want.

* ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}'' allows players to build their own homes on the surfaces of planets they travel to. They can also customize their starship interiors.

** In ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'', you get your own house as a reward for HundredPercentCompletion of the "Pinnacle Station" DLC. It contains a limitless stock of grenades and medi-gel, as well as a computer terminal to procure rare equipment for fairly low prices. It is never mentioned again though.

* In ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' you can eventually afford to buy a small house just west of your hometown. The [[ShadyRealEstateAgent guy you buy it from]] neglects to mention that it's ''[[spoiler:missing a wall]]'', but it contains a [[HundredPercentCompletion photo location]] and a [[CrackFic silly magazine excerpt]] so it's totally worth it.

* ''VideoGame/WurmOnline'' as well, which is superficially similar to ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' but a few orders of magnitude more complicated. The end results, be it a 2x2 hut with a vegetable patch or a magnificent villa, is still immensely satisfying once you've nailed the last plank into place.
* The later ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' games would have these as save points. Notably, in ''GTA: San Andreas'', these also can be used to access your wardrobe. Changing just one part of your outfit erases your wanted level. Think about it.
** Also, buy a piece of clothing once and you can access it from ''every'' safehouse in the state.
* In ''VideoGame/RadiationIsland'' the safe houses provide a place to heal up, restock, and sleep in relative safety. You'll need to settle in one and turn it into a PlayerHeadquarters to survive. You can craft extra chests to store things. A recent update gave players the ability to build their own houses, complete with multiple floors, stairs, and functional doors. The doors open only for the player who installed them, turning any building into a secure hiding place or storage area. Craft enough furniture like tables, desks, chairs and beds, and AnInteriorDecoratorIsYou as a bonus.
* ''VideoGame/TestDrive Unlimited'', in both the first and second games, they allow you to buy houses that, the more luxurious they are, the more cars you can hold in it's garage. This goes from a crappy caravan with a two car garage shack to a house on the side of a hill with waterfalls and an eight car garage. Then there are the yachts that go for five to seven million on Ibiza or Hawaii, respectively.
* ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' has a Construction skill that allows you to build and customise a house, starting from a little one-room shack and potentially becoming a huge castle with a dungeon other players can explore.
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestX'' lets you build a house [[AnInteriorDesignerIsYou which can then be customized]].
* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'', you get your own house as a reward for HundredPercentCompletion of the "Pinnacle Station" DLC. It contains a limitless stock of grenades and medi-gel, as well as a computer terminal to procure rare equipment for fairly low prices. It is never mentioned again though.
** In the Citadel DLC for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', Admiral Anderson gives [[PlayerCharacter Shepard]] his apartment on the Citadel so Shepard has [[WarIsHell a place to clear their head]]. It [[AnInteriorDesignerIsYou has some limited customization options]] and hosts an optional party for Shepard and the surviving squadmates.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Spellforce}} 2'' you're awarded (by plot) with control over a ''fiefdom'' for your heroic efforts in warning the human kingdom of the impending Shadow Pact invasion. It turns out to be one of the most embattled, troubled provinces in the kingdom that has killed multiple ruling families, and it's up to you to clean it up or die trying. Except you eventually do so well, along with other plot developments, that the king gets suspicious and sends a "pacifying" force in under the pretext of crushing a rebellion you never even considered. It also ends up becoming something of a secondary HubLevel complete with merchants and quest-givers since you're dealing with a whole RTS-style map, after all.
* Much like ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'''s safehouses the ''VideoGame/SaintsRow'' series provides the player with "cribs" where they can access their weapon stash, money vault, and wardrobe as well as customize their gang, rewatch cutscenes or buy furniture upgrades.
* In ''VideoGame/FantasyLife'', the player starts out living in a small attic and can eventually move to bigger houses inside FirstTown and get a vacation home in each of the two other towns. The beds that can be put in them work as both a free inn and an extra save point. In addition, the houses are part of the places to which the player can teleport freely and furniture can be both made and purchased.
* Some ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' games feature this. ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonFriendsOfMineralTown'' had one that would pretty much take all of your money and lumber. The other houses had special requirements to unlock them. ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonAnimalParade'' has some around town.
* In ''VideoGame/AnUntitledStory'', you can buy a home in [=SkyTown=] that can be decorated with numerous items bought from its landlord, including three [[GameWithinAGame arcade cabinets]] which reward {{heart container}}s when you beat the top-score in each of them.
* In ''VideoGame/KultHereticKingdoms'', Alita can buy houses, which may be more convenient for resting (a game mechanic) than the alternatives. They also provide storage, although less than Alita herself can carry if you equip her with lots of bags.
* The party in ''VideoGame/RakenzarnTales'' gets a place near the start of the game. Besides the standard use of free healing, you can also converse with all the party members who begin taking up residence once you recruit them, as well as access the monster encyclopedia and in-game biographies.
* Once the party moves to their base in ''VideoGame/{{Lunarosse}}'', several party members get their own houses. It's also the only save point in the game where Channing can check on the RelationshipValues.
* In the ''Blood and Wine'' DLC of ''Videogame/TheWitcher3WildHunt'', Geralt receives the deed to a vineyard early on in the story that can be upgraded to include various furnishings and decorations, some of which will grant you buffs by using them.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' has a run-down house you can buy and then shell out tons more cash to upgrade. There's not much to do there besides sleep and display/store a handful of weapons and shields as trophies; however, it's probably the player's first glimpse of how the game averts the series' usual MoneyForNothing.
** Buying the house and all the upgrades also unlocks the "From the Ground Up" side quest line where you help one of the workers, Hudson, build Tarrey Town in the Akkala region by bringing him wood and merchants whose names end in the suffix "son". Completing Tarrey Town also unlocks another resident merchant, Grante, who sells rare armor pieces you may have missed as well as the Hylian Shield.
* ''VideoGame/BugFables'' has a locked red house in the Ant Kingdom, and, when Chapter 3 is completed, Team Snakemouth can buy a key for it from Beette in the Bee Kingdom balcony. The house allows you to sleep in it for free and let you access its and the nearly inn's roofs, in latter of which there is a Charge Up medal to be collected. There is also a pet bed, in which [[spoiler:you can leave [[SecretCharacter Chompy]] in or take/give her ribbons without going all the way back to the Bee Kingdom hive]].
* ''VideoGame/HouseFlipper'', naturally. In addition to fixing and selling houses, you can also select one of them to be your home office, where you live and operate your business.

* In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokémon Platinum]]'', a random person gives you a Villa in the Resort Area for free. Other powerful trainers will visit you there, but it's really just something to spend your cash on.
* Most of the ''VideoGame/{{Aveyond}}'' games feature the TraumaInn–type house. They also allow you to speak to your teammates.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' has one which serves as a free inn, but as there's already one of those aboard the Highwind, [[BraggingRightsReward it's really just for the bragging rights.]]
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', players can purchase plots of land in housing districts upon which to build homes, either for themselves or their Free Company. There are a limited number of housing plots available on each server, but players also have the option of buying a private chamber in their Free Company house or an apartment.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'' series, the primary means of earning money is [[AnEntrepreneurIsYou house-flipping or renting out properties]]. [[AnInteriorDecoratorIsYou Buying better furniture]] for your properties increases the homes' values and the occupants' standard of living, subsequently increasing the amount they pay you in rent.
* ''VideoGame/TheSims'', of course, but you're pretty much required to build a house if you want.
* You're required to buy a house in ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing''... and you spend most of the game expanding it and paying off your debt.
* Each game in ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series (starting with ''Daggerfall'') gives you the option to buy and/or build a home. Specific details:
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'', you can buy a house. A house affords you a safe space to rest without drawing the ire of the aggressive CityGuards, stockpile loot, and otherwise serve as a status symbol. Houses are purchased from banks, or obtained as a gift upon achieving the highest rank in a [[TheOrder knightly order]].
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' allows you to build your own stronghold as part of the [[TheClan Great House]] questlines. In each case, it requires a sum of money to fund the construction, a land deed from the Duke, and you'll need to complete a series of quests (differing depending on the Great House you joined) in order to make the stronghold viable, attract settlers, and remove threats/obstacles to it. Given that it is the first game in the series following the [[VideoGame3DLeap 3D Jump]], it allows plenty of opportunity to become an [[AnInteriorDesignerIsYou Interior Designer]], displaying all of your questing treasures and turning it into your own SuperheroTrophyShelf. ({{Game Mod}}s exist which make this process even easier, as well as many which add additional residences for you to acquire.)
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' allows you to buy a home in each of the major cities, ranging from a ramshackle shack to modest houses to a full blown (albeit haunted) mansion. The [[WreakingHavok physics engine]] unfortunately makes displaying your treasures ''far'' more difficult than it was in ''Morrowind'', as attempting to place items next to other items has a tendency to knock them around, if not send them flying across the room. (Once again, {{Game Mod}}s exist which make this process ''far'' easier. In fact, some of the modders were hired by Bethesda to improve the system for ''Skyrim''.)
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'':
*** In the vanilla game, you can purchase a house in each of the major holds of Skyrim once you've built up enough of a reputation in those holds. In addition to the money required to buy the house, furnishings (including useful things like extra storage, Alchemy stations, Cooking stations, Enchanting stations, etc.) are separate and cost even more money.
*** The ''Hearthfire'' DLC allows you to purchase land and build your own house from the ground up. Once again, it is quite costly, but you can at least find many of the building materials yourself to save money. You can build anything from a simple one-room cabin-like house to full blown mansions with dedicated trophy rooms, {{Mage Tower}}s, libraries, shrines to the gods of your choosing, and much more.
* You can purchase a [=NeoHome=] in ''Website/{{Neopets}}'', and [[AnInteriorDesignerIsYou decorate it to your heart's content]].
* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'' had "stronghold quests" for each PC class, with rewards ranging from a castle for Fighters and the Planar Sphere for Mages to a bunk in TheOrder of the Radiant Heart HQ for [[ThePaladin paladins]].
* ''Franchise/DragonAge'':
** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', if you cleaned the {{DLC}}-only location Soldier's Peak of Darkspawn infestation, it would serve as your nominal home. You couldn't actually live there, but it had two local merchants and, more importantly, the only container usable for storing your own items in the entire game.
** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening'' expansion, you get Vigil's Keep as your home: it lets you [[ArbitraryHeadcountLimit swap party members in and out]] like the Party Camp did in ''Origins'' and has a storage container like Soldier's Peak.
** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'', you get two houses: In Act I, you and your family are living with your uncle in his small home in Lowtown. There is a storage chest there, and you can always find your mother, uncle, brother/ sister, and possibly dog there to converse with them, and can read letters sent to you, mostly to start sidequests. By Act II, you've moved up in the world, and purchased the old family manor in Hightown. It has all the same features as Gamlen's shack, except its bigger, Gamlen doesn't live there, you can potentially ask your Love Interest to move in with you, and [[spoiler: your sibling can no longer be found there.]]

* In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'', your home is where new party members come to call and where you can [[ArbitraryHeadcountLimit swap them out]].
** In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'', you can stay at your home in Aiedo for free instead of staying at an inn. You can display the ridiculous souvenir crap you can buy at a tourist trap in the first half of the game.
** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' gives players the option to rent and furnish an apartment of their own.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' the Lone Wanderer can get one of two homes depending on the outcome of the "Power of the Atom" quest. The player can buy several preset decoration schemes for either dwelling and store other useful, valuable, or decorative items there. Both contain [[TraumaInn beds]] and can be stocked with additional useful furniture.

* In ''VideoGame/UltimaOnline'', one of the first commercially successful {{MMORPG}}s, a player with enough gold could buy a deed to a house and then place it almost anywhere in the game world. This led to the online equivalent of a housing bubble as available land was quickly claimed, and newer players could only buy an existing house or hope for a negligent player to allow their home to fall into collapse (thus freeing up some of the limited landscape). In the late Nineties UO properties could be found on eBay for hundreds of US dollars. The advantages of housing in UO included item storage, easy access to item crafting (forges, looms, etc.), a safe place to practice skills (given the early PVP everywhere environment), and prestige. Given this was one of the first online examples of home ownership and the developers did not fully anticipate [[HumansAreBastards human nature]], the disadvantages included burglary, home invasion, stalking, etc. But those were the good old days.

* Like ''Terraria'', ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}'' allows players to build their own homes on the surfaces of planets they travel to. They can also customize their starship interriors.

Compare HubLevel.

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/AnimalCrossing https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/animal_crossing_city_folk_buying_a_house.png]]]]

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' has a run-down house you can buy and then shell out tons more cash to upgrade. There's not much to do there besides sleep and display a handful of weapons and shields as trophies; however, it's probably the player's first glimpse of how the game averts the series' usual MoneyForNothing.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate II'' had "stronghold quests" for each PC class, with rewards ranging from a castle for Fighters and the Planar Sphere for Mages to a bunk in TheOrder of the Radiant Heart HQ for [[ThePaladin paladins]].

** In ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', you can buy a home in Diamond City for a nominal fee. You can also ''build'' your own home in any of the settlements in the game. The main advantage to the Diamond City home over homes built in settlements is the fact that items you store in your Diamond City home cannot be taken from errant [=NPCs=], making it the safest place to keep unused items.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'' you can eventually afford to buy a small house just west of your hometown. The [[ShadyRealEstateAgent guy you buy it from]] neglects to mention that it's ''[[spoiler:missing a wall]]'', but it contains a [[HundredPercentCompletion photo location]] and a [[CrackFic silly magazine excerpt]] so it's totally worth it.

[[caption-width-right:350:Prepare yourself to work under that guy for the rest of your life.]]

*** The ''Heartfire'' DLC allows you to purchase land and build your own house from the ground up. Once again, it is quite costly, but you can at least find many of the building materials yourself to save money. You can build anything from a simple one-room cabin-like house to full blown mansions with dedicated trophy rooms, {{Mage Tower}}s, libraries, shrines to the gods of your choosing, and much more.

** In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'', you can stay at your home in Aiedo for free instead of staying at an inn-- it becomes a bit of a TearJerker when you return to it after [[spoiler: Alys is killed, and all her things are still there.]] You can also display the ridiculous souvenir crap you can buy at a tourist trap in the first half of the game.

%%Image chosen via crowner in the Image Suggestions thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/ImagePickin/ImageSuggestions92

Some games offer you the option to buy a house. This may act as a free [[TraumaInn Inn]], give you a place to store stuff, or just be a BraggingRightsReward. It rarely has a major impact on the gameplay (but may be a big pull for certain types of players, depending on the level of AnInteriorDesignerIsYou).