Quick and dirty hacks ...
I'm quite tired of waiting.
Pet glamor -
They told me next expansion ... well here we are ...
Since the only other models available now are the Carbuncles, could you just clone the spells, tweak the Carbuncles' attack potency to match their Egi cousins, and give them to SMN - i.e. 2 additional spells to summon the Carbuncles that will perform exactly like their Egi counterparts.
After the whole pet glamor system is up and running, you can remove it.
Player Housing -
I have no idea what your long term solution is or even if you have thought of one.
How about just giving players instance housing for the time being. When you work out some neighborhood system that scales properly then just "move" the instance house data into the plots.
Isolated house is better than no house.