This sounds like an urban legend to me. While technically possible, I seriously doubt that it is true.
In fact, the whole deal with alts buying up multiple houses is, I think, a lot less common than people assume. I'm guessing that if they did implement the whole one-house-per-account thing, only a bare handful of houses would be reclaimed. They SHOULD still do it - I mean, come on, no single person should own more than one house when housing is such a limited commodity - but it's far from a solution to the problem.
I disagree with this. Neighborhoods are the goal games should strive toward. Players should be able to walk around and admire people's houses, not select them from a list and be transported there. Instanced homes are all but pointless. I had an instanced home in FFXI, and never felt any real desire to furnish it and pretty it up. After all, I was the only one that could see it - and even when they added the ability to invite others into your home years later, there still wasn't much point as the only folks you'd be inviting were friends, so only a bare handful would ever see it.
The issue here is that SE's goals were too ambitious, not that they were wrong. They didn't have the infrastructure to support a neighborhood system, and still don't. That's what they need to fix. And if you're fine with instanced housing, well, we HAVE that, now - apartments are plentiful, and to my knowledge even on the most densely populated servers there are still available to purchase.
