Repo-man

The repo-man is an NPC that visits a Sim's residential lot when they neglect to pay their bills. Over time, after bills have been delivered to a house, they change color, going from white, to yellow, to orange to red. As they progress through the colors the need to pay them becomes more urgent. It's (approximately) two days between color changes. Once bills stay red for more than two days, they will warn the player at 7:00am that they must be paid immediately. The player has until 6:00pm the next night to pay, otherwise the red bills will explode and summon the repo-man.

He usually takes one or two items, but if the Sim is in a large amount of debt he may take several. The item/items he takes (approximately) add up to the the amount the Sim owes. The Sims of the household get a negative memory for each of the items taken, and may periodically cry about the lost item.

The repo-man in The Urbz: Sims in the City is Harry Snivel, who is also the landlord and also one of the three main villains.

If forced to come in The Sims 3 with testingcheatsenabled, the repo-man will take a large amount of items (sometimes at least twenty items) regardless of whether any debt is owed.

In most of The Sims games, he wears black, or at least dark, attire. He will come onto the lot and use a gun-like device on whatever he is going to repossess. The gun's special effects may vary from game to game, but the result is that the item vanishes.

In The Sims 3 and The Sims 2, if the player removes the doors leading into their house, the repo-man will use his teleporter to gain entrance.

In The Sims 2, if the household does not have any furniture at all, the repo-man will criticize the family for wasting his time, then leave.

In The Sims 3, if the player's Sims live in a house built on an ancient burial ground, the repo-man will suck up the graves with his gun. He will then warn the Sim to pay their bills or he will be back.

In The Sims 3, if the household has no objects that can be taken, the repo-man will subtract household funds that are approximately of the same value as the amount owed.

The repo-man can be removed various ways with testingcheatsenabled:
 * In The Sims 2, he can be removed if an error is forced upon by control clicking, force error.
 * In The Sims 3, he can be removed if deleted by shift clicking, object...

Trivia

 * If he is present in The Sims 3 and if you try to save the game while he's present, the game will ask if you want to save in the current situation.
 * In The Sims, due to the ability to create a family that only contains children, the repo-man will take your objects due to not paying the bills (since only adults can pay bills). This can be prevented by using move_objects on cheat and delete the mail woman before she could put the bill into the mailbox. The Sims 2 and The Sims Stories fixed this by requiring at least one adult in the playing household.
 * One commonly experienced problem in The Sims 3 is that when a player changes their active household but then returns to the original lot after a few days, a repo-man may appear after a few Sim-hours as the Sims did not pay the bills in the player's absence.
 * In The Sims 2, the repo-man has an incomplete character file, and should therefore not be interacted with outside his designated in-game purpose. Doing so can cause game corruption, fixed only by uninstalling and reinstalling the game.
 * Locking the doors isn't going to stop the repo-man from taking things.
 * Using the alwaysallowbuildbuy cheat to build walls around the repo-man isn't going to work either.
 * If you delete the repo-man using cheats, he will come out of the truck a few seconds later. It is unknown whether this is the same repo-man.
 * The repo-man has a way to foil almost every trap or cheat imaginable. Nothing stops him except paying the bills and slowing him down for an extended period of time.

Tips

 * It's said in The Sims 2, if there is no furniture, the repo man will only criticise the family for wasting his time. Try putting all furniture in the sims inventory, then putting it back once he's gone.