Another issue is that if a ReNu You Senso Orb is on your lot, it won't load in your hood or Uni.
That essentially takes 90% of my families out of play. Maybe more.
So far my "gamplay" tonight has consisted of waiting for the game to load, waiting for a lot to load, alt-tabbing out when it doesn't load, shutting down w/task manager, then doing it all over again.
SO that's what was causing my lots to refuse to load!
I was fixing it by moving the family out and back in again.