[SUGGESTION] Adding a "Property Broker" NPC and system

I think it's awesome that FFXIV will see the addition of a Lottery system for Housing. However, let's not pretend that it immediately fixes everything, either. I would like to propose a system that is FAIRLY simple, but I think would add even more flexibility, and would further reduce an element of frustration alongside a "raffle/lottery system".

The idea is simple; you add a "Property Broker" NPC to every housing area. If you own a plot, you can list it "for sale" or "for trade". If you sell your plot, the Broker automatically takes a percentage of the proceeds (say 10%?), which functions as a gold-sink.

If you wish to TRADE your plot, however, perhaps there is a fee for each player (which can be negotiated for one player to pay the fee for both properties). This is a less substantial gold-sink.

The beauty here is that, even if you already own a home, over time you can coordinate with your friends and/or family, and eventually try to get in the same Ward as one another! Even as much as I LOVE my beachfront pad in The Mist, I would likely be willing to trade it for a house next to one of my friends.

I would also add one more feature:

"Accepting (or Not Accepting) Offers"

When you click on your Placard, you would see an option to toggle whether or not you are "Accepting Offers". When toggled-on, players could click on your placard as submit an offer, to either buy or trade-for your plot. My thinking is you would receive notification of that via in-game Mail.

Similar to above, this would allow players to have a little more "control" in trying to get certain spots. And for perfectionists, like myself, it might even allow me to work towards getting a house on Ward 1, by "Offering" my current plot and some additional gil, for the exact same plot but on Ward 1.

Let's face it; players are ALWAYS going to look for ways to "purchase" houses. It's one of the reasons I think ONLY "Personal" housing should exist, and Free Companies should only "flag" a member's house as "the FC house", rather than allowing FC leader to essentially own "two houses at the same time".

By handling all of this stuff in-game, implementing a moderate gold-sink, and also giving existing home-owners a means of "moving up in the world", I think it would just create a much more pleasant environment.

By all means, keep things restrictive *at first* when Ishgard housing arrives. But again, it would be phenomenal if, as a player, I had a little more agency is WHERE my house was, versus where I would LIKE it to be.

I'm surprised that no one else has a take on this?

Imagine being able to work towards, not only GETTING a house, but being able to get either a SPECIFIC house, or even just being able to become neighbors with a friend!

I could see that becoming super cool, especially for like a married couple to get houses next to each other, maybe even working on decorations that "match" or somehow compliment each other (or even just having a "bridge" from one yard to the other).

And for those of us with the patience to hoard up a lot of gil over time, it would give us a meaningful outlet for it. I would happily pay big gil for a specific Large plot whenever Ishgard opens up, or even a specific Medium in Shirogane!

This will kill housing even more, because rich players will monopolise and sell plots with huge overprice

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Originally Posted by AnPo

This will kill housing even more, because rich players will monopolise and sell plots with huge overprice

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An easy solution to that is limit sale price to what the base price of the plot was (either fully devalued, or starting value).

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Originally Posted by AnPo

This will kill housing even more, because rich players will monopolise and sell plots with huge overprice

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It's not like things are much better now; if anything, it's even MORE shady, because the "work-around" players have come up with is "buying/selling Free Companies (with house)".

The fact is, this is an MMO, players are ALWAYS going to want things like this. If someone doesn't log into their house for a while, their house would still go up for sale as normal; at least this way, houses could still trade hands, even if house-owners are still active players. And the truth is, gil SHOULD have value, and if you REALLY want a particular house, and you're willing to work hard to acquire it, you at least have the opportunity to OFFER gil for the place.

In doing so, like I said, I'd also make it a pretty significant gold-sink, to hopefully remove some of the disparity between "rich players" and "poor players".

If anything, the current system is more harmful to players, because you really have little to no agency in whether or not you can acquire a house; you have to rely on other players simply QUITTING or NOT CARING about their house. With a Broker NPC, you at least have another avenue available to you, which is trying to wheel-and-deal until you get enough gil to get your first place!

Of course, in doing so, I would probably make tighter restrictions towards buying a house. Eliminate "Free Company houses" altogether (I know for a fact, many players are able to own two houses because they have a Personal AND a Free Company house), I would limit it to owning a single house per account (instead of per server or data center), and maybe you can only buy or sell a house once per 30/60/90 days. I would probably be a little more lax on players who "Trade" or "Exchange" their plots, since they're not having an impact on the market at all, they're simply exchanging gil for locations they prefer. And maybe the account has to be 90 days or older to qualify to purchase a house, AND purchase the current expansion, just to avoid the potential of exploiting free accounts.

Not being able to 'at-will' sell your house is intentional for the very reasons that AnPo pointed out.

Changing how housing is acquired just shuffles the deck chairs and solves nothing. There are several options that Square can take to actually address the housing crisis instead of hand-wave changes hoping we'd just shut up about it.

We believe the Island Sanctuary feature will decouple gardening from yard ownership. They still need to decouple workshops, submersibles, airships, and aetherial wheels from guild house ownership. That removes the most of the pressure to acquire housing for functional reasons.

Apartments should be reworked to offer different sized floorplans (apt, small, med, large) with the corresponding content limits and offer options to add on an exterior.

Or they could just bite the bullet and implement instanced housing like they should have in the first place.

Just no. Houses are not meant to be sold between players. We do not need to turn the system into the sole playground of the super rich

What we need is a system that will provide a house to every player and FC that wants one.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

We believe the Island Sanctuary feature will decouple gardening from yard ownership.

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No, "we" don't even if you do.

YoshiP has repeatedly said that there will not be any competitive element to Island Sanctuary. Gardening in housing most definitely has a competitive element in MB sales. That eliminates it from being moved from housing to Island Sanctuary.

It’s honestly better to keep housing sales as much out of the players hands as possible, because I’m just an average joe, but if I knew I could legitimately get a house via lottery and legitimately flip it for double or more gil, I probably would. And could possibly brute force this with multiple accounts. With the current system, I don’t have any desire to do this.

Furthermore, I own a small beachfront in mist and the large oceanfront/secret hot spring house in Shirogane… on a very populated server.

These are premium spots that I’d never sell outside of ridiculous offers, let alone for market value.

So, not that your idea is a bad one, just it’s one that I don’t support in the current situation.


Now, were there no limit to house supply, and were players able to sell a house as is including decoration and furnishing placements…that could’ve a different story.

Houses may not be meant to SELL amongst, but they ARE clearly designed to change hands in SOME capacity. And what I'm suggesting makes zero impact on inactive houses going for sale.

@Kaynide: You have two really awesome plots. If you're super into housing, it makes sense you might never want to part with them. But myself, for example, I can't even HOPE to ever acquire that Shirogane house, because I have zero agency. I have to hope that you, and the owners on the other wards, essentially just decide to quit the game.

That sucks.

What would suck less? If I at least had a means of making an OFFER to purchase or trade plots with you. Of course, I could maybe do a "Player Search" for one of the owners every single day I log-in, and if I DO happen to catch them, maybe I try to work out something. But then it's going to be completely unregulated, which is just asking for trouble.

The fact is, Houses are DESIRABLE POSSESSIONS for players, so why are players so convinced "it should be totally RNG"? I mean, Housing is the main reason a few of my friends even play FFXIV; if you want gil, pick up some tradeskills and get to work! And making it a big enough gil-sink would actually help LEVEL the playing the field, by taking a ton of gil out of the economy.

At the very least, even if you couldn't BUY or SELL houses, it would be nice to be able to TRADE them. Like I said, I would love to be able to work towards either getting a "dream house", or even becoming an in-game neighbor to one of my friends.

The current system is just SO restrictive, it places almost all of power to players who simply can play ALL the time. If I'm willing to take time leveling tradeskills, crafting stuff to sell on market-board, and build up gil over time, why not give us an option to offer that gil for the houses we *really* want?

The whole point of the random timers and the lottery system is to prevent players from directly selling to others at inflated prices. So I'm against this.

If anything, what they need to do is restrict transfers the same way new purchases are, so that you can't sell a plot for transfer either. Then make all of the wards, not just some, lottery based for both transfers and new purchases.

There won't be a full fix for housing unless they're somehow able to one day add enough wards for everyone or implement an instanced housing system for everyone that doesn't crash the servers. But I think the above is the best case scenario barring actually having enough housing for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Terin

The current system is just SO restrictive, it places almost all of power to players who simply can play ALL the time. If I'm willing to take time leveling tradeskills, crafting stuff to sell on market-board, and build up gil over time, why not give us an option to offer that gil for the houses we *really* want?

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(Emphasis mine)

A.) No it doesn't.
You can get houses without no-lifing a placard.
Let's please not keep pretending we need to be unhealthy in the pursuit of a house.

B.) I don't understand how your system wouldn't also reward people who spend all their time in game.
If you could make an offer to Kaynide... do you honestly think you wouldn't be outbid?
Even if you could make offers you're still not getting that plot.
The people that have been playing longer than you will be.
The people that play the game to make gil will be.
The people who engage in RMT will be.
I don't believe such a system would help you get a house you want.

I mean, I don’t think anyone disagrees with the notion that housing is extremely desirous for players… and I also do t think anyone actually loves the RNG lottery system in itself.

Rather, since SE has designed a housing system that is extremely limited, a random lottery is the best option.

I still feel like adding a Housing Broker would help things quite dramatically. A "lottery" system could potentially be good, but then it's entirely luck. It doesn't address the issue, which is facilitating players being about to trade housing plots.

As said, it sucks to have zero agency in the Housing market. If I spent a lot of time earning gil, is it really so bad I can put that towards getting a super cool house?

Moreover, if the the "brokerage fee" is high enough, then over time, it would lower the value of houses, because it could remove a ton of gil from the economy.

Perhaps a "happy medium" is that when buying a housing lottery-ticket, players can elect to purchase more than one, to increase their odds of getting a house. But in doing so, say a Small if 5mil and you buy 10 tickets, everyone who LOSES gets their gil back, but if you WIN, it keeps all 50mil you spent?