You know I often see complaints for this being not enough houses to go around and on my (what seems like fairly populated) server we have a surplus of houses unused, even small. SE is obviously aware of the statistics and yet they are evenly spreading the server loads. Not sure if this is a technical issue (their fallback excuse) or what, but does seem to be an oversight. Rather than cave and give out inn room sized houses (player housing is too awesome for this), I agree with the steps they're taking to ease this in. Eventually demand will be met and rather than have ghost town wards, I like that they're not just letting everyone buy a small and be done with it. The ward I'm in has almost all medium housing available and one large left, with many others looking the same.

This needs to be balanced better before opening the floodgates IMO.