Those are the 32million Gil questions, aren't they...
From what I understood from the live letter, housing transfer doesn't exactly get to call dibs. It's basically similar to buying a house, except you free up another slot (that you currently own) at the same time. I assume both the new housing area and transfer will be release together.
likely in the live letter prior to the patch. usually a month or so in advance
Also like to add, so far they haven't confirm if the moving function is available to personal housing yet, which I'd love to hear about it from SE soon. (FC need moving function mostly because of workshop content)
I'm hoping FCs get a few day head start before opening up to personal housing. My FC has an eye on a plot we want, but it would suck if they all got bought up by some person with way too much gil looking to sell the plots later for exorbitant amounts.
I really hope they ban personal housing purchases in Shirogane for at least a week. At least give the homeless FC's a chance to grab something before the massive waves of house-broker alts swoops in.
You say that, then you have mega servers deciding they might do something crazy because all the houses are bought within the hour. By just FCs. What they should actually do is fill out the rest of the page with Shirogane housing and have 18 wards for all residential areas. Will they do that? Probably not, but I sure hope so.
Would just be nice if they limit houses by account. But that won't happen I'm sure. I'll be disappointed to be sure if I cannot claim a Med in the new place, but I won't be that upset. Hyperion's oddity about being high and somehow not high pop makes me nervous.