Animal Crossing: City Folk - Unlockables and Hints to Help you

Instead of selling the fruit you started with, get some paper and write letters to your villagers and attach the fruit as gifts. They will send you random furniture and fruit in return.

It's always a good idea to use the spoiler tag when posting information that some people might wanna find on their own. I added it for you.

In the beginning of most AC games, you can go fishing for rare fish and use those to pay off your house debt instead of working.

This is sort of a neat trick I discovered:

Ok, say one of your neighbors has a furniture item you really want, right? Well, send that person another furniture item of roughly the same size, and they will most likely put the item you sent them inside their house, while getting rid of the other item (The one you're trying to get, hopefully). Later that day, or maybe even the next day, check the recycling bin, and their old item should be there.
I've done this trick a few times, to attempt complete my regal furniture set. I only need one more item of it.

If you reset, make sure there aren't little children around when you start playing again. According to this link, Mr. Resetti may disturb young children: http://gonintendo.com/?p=65727