Land Taxes

I'm from a small server, so most of the housing problems don't really apply to me, but I still follow discussions around housing issues.

It seems that the #1 complaint about the current implementation (so, not talking about the numerous suggestions to go to instanced individual housing or stuff that's a dramatic change) is the amount of players who hoard houses for the sole purpose of flipping them for a profit.

It's against the rules, but the GMs can't possibly police everything well enough to catch everyone making it profitable enough for the people who do it anyway. I've seen plenty of "lock housing to 1 per account" suggestions, but since FC leaders shouldn't be prevented from having a personal house if they want, there's no stopping determined hoarders from just owning 8 FC houses per account instead of 8 individual houses.

I had a random thought the other day which might be a potential solution. Instead of trying to introduce some hard restrictions on house ownership, why not instead attack the economic incentives of house flipping? My thought was that some kind of "land tax" could be added to housing which would make the act of simply sitting on land cost gil. In order to turn a profit, then, the seller would have to sell the house for more than the purchase price + total tax paid while waiting for a buyer.

It doesn't have to be too extreme, something like every 30 days:
Small house - 100k gil
Medium house - 500k gil
Large house - 1mil gil
Prices would apply the same for both individual and FC owned houses. The jumps in price between the sizes loosely correspond to the differences in the purchase price of each size.

I know the idea of constantly recurring expenses on owning a house would be a huge turn-off for many, but if it served to deter people from engaging in house-flipping, then I'd expect more houses to open up for people who would actually use them and decorate them. Besides, with housing basically being a large gil sink, I'd think this would fit right in.

Besides, it even opens the opportunity to make the auto-demolition a bit more friendly. Instead of a straight 45-day auto-demolition, house owners might get an escrow account with their house in which they can deposit up to 6x the 30-day tax. If the 30 days is up and your escrow doesn't have sufficient funds to cover the tax, then auto-demolition happens right then (of course, you should get e-mails warning of this as the date approaches). This would give people the ability to pay in advance to keep their house through an extended break.

As a player from a small server where our FC had no trouble getting a house once we could afford one and then later getting my own personal house after auto demolition was added (and seeing plenty of small plots regularly available even today), such a tax would be kind of annoying, but I could easily cover 100k/30 days for my personal house.

I would think that house flippers might find such a tax to be a real pain. Not only would they have to constantly shift funds to their alts to pay for the tax, but every 30 days without a buyer could cost them millions of gil.

Basically, for those in one of the large servers where it seems nothing SE can do with the current system can ever open up enough plots that you can have a shot at home ownership, would you be fine with paying a tax if you knew such a tax made it possible for more people to enjoy housing?

1mil every 30 days for a large house HELLLLLLL NAAAAWWWW. And the prices are so insane from flippers it wouldn't even matter to them. There's better ways to make gil sinks in game.

1mil/30 days a bit much? What would you suggest?

I'd think that flippers would be encouraged to radically drop their prices as they would be strongly encouraged to sell the house sooner to avoid as much tax as possible. In the current setup, there's nothing stopping someone from buying up a plot and listing a price of 200 mil gil forever as they wait for inflation to eventually make it to where someone desperate enough for that house would actually have 200 mil to spare. They could wait years to sell that house and the profit would still be insane. Throw in a tax, though, and the longer they sit on it, the more their profit disappears. This would encourage them to lower prices to what people can and are willing to pay. Additionally, with tax making housing less attractive that would lower demand which should further serve to drive down prices.

Another point to 1mil/30 days for large while 100k/30 days for small is this: Everyone and their dog seems to want a large house, but there's only so many. It makes a bit more sense that large FCs would likely take up large houses and due to the membership (or airships), hopefully not have trouble with that 1mil/30 days. If you can't afford the monthly costs of the house (mansion) of your dreams, but you could afford a smaller place, wouldn't it be better to settle for the smaller place vs not having one at all?

The only one who makes gil in my fc is me, honestly. We're all RPers. I would be the one paying it every month and I already pay a sub to play this game.

..And you severely underestimate how fast houses sell, even from flippers. :X Small houses on balmung sell for 50mil anyways, what's 100k/month ? It just seems like this is more punishing to everyone else, than to house flippers.

Going after flies with a bazooka, here. This would actually hurt legitimate owners more than it would hurt the flippers.

Just because someone has a house, doesn't mean they have all that cash to spare. To spend months saving up for a house, only to lose it purely because you can't meet the monthly cost would be horrible.

I'd settle for a land tax (or some equivalent land lease thing) if it meant scrapping the current reclaim system.

Least that way if I wanted to unsub for a patch or 2 I could just pay 3-6 months tax (or equivelant) up front and be safe from demolition

Would be much better than what we have now imo

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

It's against the rules, but the GMs can't possibly police everything well enough to catch everyone

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They can with your help! If you see something, say something!
Only you can prevent forest fires realtors.

Land flippers don't tend to hold onto land, they buy it and immediately go to resell it. The tax would only affect those using the plots. I'm not sure if SE actually does anything as I've reported the same individual selling on multiple accounts/alts and they continue to do so. They need to make it harder to simply drop the land into someone's lap. I'd even like to see them go as far as flagging an account that's flipped a house to be unable to purchase housing other than an apartment or an fc room for up to a year if not permanently. Remove all land associated with the account and in addition they cannot own FC land while the account is flagged. Ownership will always pass them over in the event of an FC leader not returning and they will be ineligible to be directly handed leadership.

No. Stop trying to punish the players for SE's mistake. I don't agree with house flippers, but taxing will only punish the legitimate owners.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

They can with your help! If you see something, say something!
Only you can prevent forest fires realtors.

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Very true. The GMs WILL respond. Spoke to one just the other day about a jerk trying to hock a medium in PF for 40M.

We need a better way to report it, though. It seemed the only way to report in-game was through the harassment pipeline... WTB "Other ToS Violation" option.

If you want to stop flipping, it's as simple as making the reverse auction work the way it was originally intended; start with prices so high that houses don't get snatched up immediately. If a small house starts at 50M, nobody is going to flip it, and they end up selling for the price that the player base values them at.

This would hurt rule abiding players more than house flippers. It would certainly force a lot of players to do content they may not necessarily be interested in or even like just to keep up with the tax.

If SE are serious about stamping down on house flippers the first thing they need to do is make it as easy to report as RMT activity. The next thing is to bring in positive features that discourage or devalue house flipping, such as more wards, more tenancy slots and introduce tenancy for apartments. More restrictions hurts everyone.

Interesting, I had been given the impression from others and from reading various sources that there were cases of entire wards being completely owned by a few individuals with most houses sitting completely empty and such.

If houses aren't being simply held by potential house flippers, then yes, a land tax would do little to help the situation.

Maybe with the datacenter move SE will have the resources to actually expand wards, but I have my doubts that approach would be scale-able enough giving the extreme difference in server populations.

For instance, the number of wards on Coeurl seems to be just about right. I recently watched a large get demolished by the auto timer and sit for around 3 days before someone finally bought it. Mediums come up frequently enough and smalls sometimes sit around enough to bottom out in pricing.

With SB, I expect the increase in active players to cause a short-term crunch on housing, but in the long run, the entire extra housing area with all of its wards and sub divisions will add an incredible amount of housing to a server which already doesn't 100% sell out on a regular basis.

I don't know if their infrastructure is set up in such a way to work like this, but instead of adding more wards to servers like Coeurl, they could just give those to the bigger servers and smaller servers probably wouldn't hurt for it.

Granted, that's already been suggested several times, so probably not much point in discussing this topic any further unless someone wants to come in and say that empty, unused houses actually are a problem.

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Originally Posted by Sylfaein

Just because someone has a house, doesn't mean they have all that cash to spare. To spend months saving up for a house, only to lose it purely because you can't meet the monthly cost would be horrible.

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This. I'm working my butt off to get a mansion in Shirogane. Unlike some of my friends, I don't make several mil a day; I'm lucky if I make 500k a day just from gathering in-demand mats, crafting easy-to-make/cheap leveling gear, and competing with the undercutters. Usually I only manage to make 250k or less, and during the weekends when the undercutting is even more rampant, I barely make 100k. To fight house flippers, players should be more proactive in reporting them. Implementing a tax system wouldn't really stop them anyways; I doubt they hold onto plots of land for a month or longer. Housing is so in-demand in this game, I doubt they'd be holding plots for longer than a week unless they're asking for an incredibly unreasonable amount.

I already pay plenty of taxes in real life; I'd much rather that not filter over into a game I play for fun.


I'm sure there are plenty of unused houses on every server. I know of quite a few large plots on my server that the owners (based on their Lodestones) only log in to keep their house, but don't really play the game. (There's a mansion owner in The Beds that is still wearing gear from 3 patches ago, yet their house is still standing, and another solo FC mansion featuring a level 1 conjurer that is completely unfurnished inside and out, yet it has been there for months now.) There are also plenty of players that own multiple plots with their alts. One individual brags in his estate info about having 5 different houses between him, his FC, his alts and their FCs. I don't have issues with solo/small FCs owning homes, but really?? 3 solo FCs, 2 personal houses, all on different alts? How do you even have the time to maintain those estates, much less use them that much?

Make housing shareable among alts on the same server. As an alt-o-holic myself, I would absolutely love that. Maybe that would at least solve the problem of these people that have 5 alts, each owning their own estate. As for unused houses...there just has to be other methods with regards to fixing that in this game without resorting to hefty land taxes.

they ever add in land taxes to keep a house you already paid out your butt for the day I know I would quit this game and wouldn't be back till the took it back out and then demand my house back that I would of lost all because of them

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

~Snip~

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I'm with ya, and good luck getting your house! I don't have a steady gil flow either, so it took months and some lucky drops in Aquapolis to save up enough for my mansion, and weeks of stalking the wards for a reclaimed plot. I would be irate if I were to suddenly be expected to pay a tax on it.

We DO need to be able to share houses with alts. Granted, it wouldn't stop greedy people from snagging all the houses they can get their slimy mitts on, but it would help for those who are just seeking the utility of a house for their multiple characters.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I'd settle for a land tax (or some equivalent land lease thing) if it meant scrapping the current reclaim system.

Least that way if I wanted to unsub for a patch or 2 I could just pay 3-6 months tax (or equivelant) up front and be safe from demolition

Would be much better than what we have now imo

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exactly - the only way I would be ok with a land tax is a) being able to pay at least 6mo+ in advance and b) removal of the auto demo system replaced with a failure to pay taxes warning/removal. I took a break from the game for a bit over a year and just came back recently for the expansion - paying in game silver for my homes over having to resub for $$$ every ~75 days would be fine with me.

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

Besides, it even opens the opportunity to make the auto-demolition a bit more friendly. Instead of a straight 45-day auto-demolition, house owners might get an escrow account with their house in which they can deposit up to 6x the 30-day tax.

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This is the main thing I would like to see, as currently, going on holiday (or some other away from home / the internet activity) for more than about a month at a time makes it hard to keep a house up... being able to pay in advance for an extended period would be very useful.

I also like the idea of a land tax in general, and while the amounts may have to be tuned, it is a good way of making people think twice about buying a house just because it's there (and may not be later) vs. buying a house because they actually want to use it.

I disagree with OP.

We house owners already pay tax in RL dollars to SE.
We must maintain our sub even if we wish to take a short break from the game or are unable to log in due to issues like hospitalization, military conscription (stuck in barracks or deployed overseas), busy with work or burnout.

Personally i did not log into the game for over 30days but my sub remains paid in 6 mth blocks continuously. This is so i have a home to return to in Eorzea when i wish to adventure again.

The tax is nothing but an annoyance to rich players but please stop with ideas aimed at punishing house owners in general due to actions of a few.

It has already been suggested before: restrict house ownership to 1 per account (per server) and all alts on said account share access to the house (if on same server). If folks want to go multi-account to flip houses then let them pay for it in RL sub dollars.

Thank you.

We pay more than enough in subs, cash shop, and more. I don't see why they can't give us the appropriate amount of houses.

When a house is either willfully abandoned or demolished, it should go on a random cooldown timer before it can be purchased again. This would counteract flipping very effectively if say the timer lasted anywhere between 3-5 RL days and the ability to purchase triggered at any time within those days.

if someone wants to camp that house plot for 3-5 days literally chained to thegame, then they deserve that plot. Lol

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Originally Posted by Chevronone

When a house is either willfully abandoned or demolished, it should go on a random cooldown timer before it can be purchased again.

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No. Lets not punish players who are nice enough to temporarily let their fc use their house until they can find something bigger. Or punish players who, for whatever reason, could not log in until just after the demolition timer hit zero. A good solution to house flipping would not potentially have severe consequences for rule abiding players.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

No. Lets not punish players who are nice enough to temporarily let their fc use their house until they can find something bigger. Or punish players who, for whatever reason, could not log in until just after the demolition timer hit zero. A good solution to house flipping would not potentially have severe consequences for rule abiding players.

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Sorry, but I think you've misunderstood what they were suggesting. They're saying about when a plot gets demolished it can't be bought again for a random period of time (between 3-5 days in their suggestion, although I think just a few hours would probably be enough). So the plot would be there and people could see it was going to be available, but the countdown would be hidden and we would not know exactly when.

This is better than it is now because (without insider knowledge from house owner) we have no idea at all when plots will demolish and requires constant checking all wards to see if any demolished and if not come back in an hour and try again. If you could see when one was coming up you might be prepared to camp it for a few hours in the hope of getting it/clicking fastest. It would also totally thwart people trying to flip houses as there is no way they could guarantee the person they're demolishing for would be able to get the house and it would stop house flipping straight away as hardly anyone would be willing to pay for a demolish if they're not guaranteed to get it.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

Sorry, but I think you've misunderstood what they were suggesting.

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I understood him just fine.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

It would also totally thwart people trying to flip houses as there is no way they could guarantee the person they're demolishing for would be able to get the house and it would stop house flipping straight away as hardly anyone would be willing to pay for a demolish if they're not guaranteed to get it.

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Which is why I'm against it. If a player lends their house to a fc they're in until the fc can find better, then they can't get their house back after the fc relinquishes when they move to another plot unless they plan on camping for days. You think that's fair? It would also thwart anyone who logs on to rebuy their house after the demolition timer hits zero. Which would suck if you, for example, couldn't log in until then because you were in hospital.

Also a house flipper could easily find a way around this by making the house a fc house and just give master to the person they're selling to.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

If a player lends their house to a fc they're in until the fc can find better, then they can't get their house back after the fc relinquishes when they move to another plot unless they plan on camping for days. You think that's fair? It would also thwart anyone who logs on to rebuy their house after the demolition timer hits zero. Which would suck if you, for example, couldn't log in until then because you were in hospital.

Also a house flipper could easily find a way around this by making the house a fc house and just give master to the person they're selling to.

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Those are oddly specific scenarios. You'd have to be unable to access FFXIV until the specific hour of the house getting demolished due to being in the hospital? The FC thing is likely going to be difficult to tackle, but it still cuts out a lot of potential business from the flippers. Regardless of what we feel would be the best method of dealing with the issue though, it's up to Square to decide what they feel is the correct line of action and carry through with it.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

If a player lends their house to a fc they're in until the fc can find better, then they can't get their house back after the fc relinquishes when they move to another plot unless they plan on camping for days. You think that's fair?

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Do people actually do that? (as in more than a handful...). That's quite a lot of money to be throwing away if you regularly demolish/repurchase a house.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

It would also thwart anyone who logs on to rebuy their house after the demolition timer hits zero.

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If they want to save their house they should log in BEFORE it's demolished otherwise they're just wasting 20% of the cost for nothing. The only scenario I could think of here is if someone bought a bought before 3.3 and the prices came down so wanted to get 80% of it back to rebuy it while making a small profit, but if people were doing that, wouldn't they have already done it by now?

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Which would suck if you, for example, couldn't log in until then because you were in hospital.

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If you weren't online when the house got auto demolished, your chances of getting it are pretty slim anyway. It only takes one person to check the wards who wants a house and has the money.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Also a house flipper could easily find a way around this by making the house a fc house and just give master to the person they're selling to.

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Yes... but levelling an FC to rank 6 isn't a quick task, assuming the buyer even wants it with an FC (maybe someone is already in an FC and looking for a personal house...).

A random demolish timer totally defeats people flipping houses, but is only a small inconvenience, in very specific circumstances, for everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

Those are oddly specific scenarios. You'd have to be unable to access FFXIV until the specific hour of the house getting demolished due to being in the hospital? The FC thing is likely going to be difficult to tackle, but it still cuts out a lot of potential business from the flippers. Regardless of what we feel would be the best method of dealing with the issue though, it's up to Square to decide what they feel is the correct line of action and carry through with it.

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Maybe they're very specific but I think the best way to tackle house flipping isn't by putting tonnes of red tape restrictions to inhibit players, but to instead reduce the size of (ideally eliminate) the market house flippers have to sell to.

House flippers aren't around because it's too easy for them to house flip, they're around because they have a gigantic potential customer base. As long as there is an extreme shortage of residency, house flippers will always have a market and will always find a way to make an enormous amount of money.

The real problem is the shortage, house flippers are just a symptom of the problem and they feed on it.

You'd be better off making a house that's been given up or demolished a 36 hour cooldown period where the land cannot be purchased... making it an annoying pain in the ass to flip a house when the buyer cannot be certain they will get the house they made the deal for.... hurt flippers by ruining their customer base's consumer confidence

Not sure if it was suggested before, but how about make 1 house per server to an account a let all the characters share the same house settings? For example:
Person A owns 3 characters; 2 in Excalibur and 1 in Shiva while owning a personal house on both. The 2 excalibur houses could use the same personal house and would have the same control settings on both.
They could still own a FC house, but only one per server.

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Originally Posted by Yukijin

Not sure if it was suggested before, but how about make 1 house per server to an account a let all the characters share the same house settings? They could still own a FC house, but only one per server.

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I suggested similar before but, pardon my cynicism, it seems many players here are far more interested in their bitter holy war against house flippers than actually coming up with positive ideas that increase the amount of players and/or characters who have access to residency, such as extra tenancy slots or a suggestion like yours. Which would reduce the market house flippers have to sell to. (which I personally believe is key in getting rid of them)

Letting all characters have access to the same house on the same server but limiting ownership to one personal house and one fc house per server would do wonders for the housing situation. It would make it impossible for house flippers to own more than two houses on a server unless they pay for multiple accounts, players would no longer feel their alts are missing out on not having a house and it would increase the amount of players who have access to housing without adding any wards.

One FC house and personal house per account problem solved no need for adding a tax. Although this will still not solve the problem it will just ease it slightly. The fix is for SE to add more houses, add instanced housing and actually create an official route to sell houses.

Just to note, Land Taxes, as suggested, would do little to stop those who buy/flip houses but put an onerous burden on everyone else. The people most likely to buy/flip houses are exceptionally wealthy players and such taxes would provide very little in the way of a barrier to them. On the other hand, more casual players who don't accrue gil quite so quickly would find owning a house even more of a financial burden than the initial purchase. In short a monthly land tax does nothing to help a lack of housing outside of making it harder for the less wealthy players to own a house.

yess, the only thing i can imagine will happen is that the house sellers will increase the price. the house flipper who buys a house today and sells it tomorrow will throw another 10 mio onto the pricetag to compensate for all the taxes he has paid. and the naive house buyer will give him these additional 10 mio...

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

If you want to stop flipping, it's as simple as making the reverse auction work the way it was originally intended; start with prices so high that houses don't get snatched up immediately. If a small house starts at 50M, nobody is going to flip it, and they end up selling for the price that the player base values them at.

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Yeah, as I've also stated countless times, this would solve flipping. The prices should be starting at about 10x their current max value and drop to their current minimum.