I am aware that it is the land that is auctioned, but without land no house. So land = House.
Semantics aside. They can price it high, but the price should be fixed. If I bid the exact price of the plot that does not mean I win and now own land. Nope someone can come along and out bid me 3-4-5 fold, because they can. This is just another strike against them for implementing good things in bad ways. Granted there are housing auctions, but most houses are bought by the seller saying, Give me X amount. You can either say here is X gimme, or how about X-Y.
First its the dye system. You cannot dye anything that you would truly want to wear. Next is melding. Cannot meld if there is no materia slots makes sense until you see over melding. If I can shove 5 where there is only 1 slot why cant I shove 5 or 3 where there are no slots. They take good ideas and twist them into monstrosities.
Honestly though artificial scarcity is the real problem. Do away with that at the very least.

As the poster above said about RMT. I can see artificial scarcity leading into RMT for land plots.