Housing plots need rent. Sound horrible? Consider these facts:

[Yeldir]

As it has been correctly observed many times before, almost every server is speckled with houses associated with dead accounts that are not used, while active FC's and players are homeless. Failure to make payments would relinquish these plots for use by people who would actually be around to enjoy them.

EDIT: Krylo pointed out that, due to land changing hands as a result of nonpayment evictions, rent costs could be trivial, because buying the newly-emptied lots remains extremely expensive. Think rent costs lower than 5%. This, I think, is even better in practice and spirit than my own idea, because it removes inactive players, does not place undue burden on active players of modest means who fought tooth and claw for their home in the first place, and preserves the intended function of housing as a powerful, deflation-driving gil sink. However, controls on suggested advance payment systems would need to be very strict, to thwart the ease by which soon-to-be-inactive accounts could perpetually blockade paying customers from making use of the wasted lot.

Other good suggestions include, but are not limited to, non-payment of dues causing ward homes being forcibly moved to single home, server friendly instances, to preserve an expensive home while freeing a lot for more deserving players, ideally with the option of replacing the entire home with all of its goodies upon the purchase of a new lot. This would mean thriving, active neighborhoods, and a reduction in the devastating sense of loss felt by returning players who did not pay their dues for whatever reason. I believe FJerome, among others, advocate this idea.

Housing's secondary purpose is to destroy gil. This is an absolutely necessary function for the well being of this game's economy, and Housing has ceased to perform this function in any meaningful capacity. Aggressive rent prices as high as 5% or even 10% of a plot's cost a month, would turn Housing back into the gil vacuum it needs to be.

EDIT: "voclain im an economy major and aggressive deflation is bad, trickle-down economics works, richard nixon was not a crook and im not trying to keep my 8 houses forever, so we don't need gil sinks OK?"
Bad news. Your classes didn't cover fantasy dragon economies that exist in perpetual states of extreme inflation because every citizen therein can spontaneously generate unlimited currency by killing 8 rabbits for an elf. We do need aggressive deflationary measures to combat this, and the money best comes from the rich, as opposed to the poor, to lessen the gil-disparity between the two, and to make the tiny 800,000ish(?) gil allowance granted by completing the various quests in the world more relatively valuable, so new players have more relative purchasing power.

While you mansion owners would understandably regard such a system with horror and disgust, consider that most of you, like myself, are compulsive crafters who tend to accumulate outrageous proportions of our respective server's wealth - wealth that needs to be continually destroyed to protect new players from being thrown into the deep end of an economy that absolutely will drown them.

A few of you might remember Dark Age of Camelot's housing worked on exactly this premise. You could fit a limited amount of platinum/gold in your home's drop box, to allow you to step away from the game for several months, but you had to play and make your dues, or your plot would be repossessed (your furniture and goodies thankfully stored safely on an npc who would return them to you in the event of repossession) and your plot given to someone who deserved to have it better than you did.

The system worked very well, and it would work well here, too - pay up to three months in advance, or even have your friends pay in your absence. Just as long as if you quit, you lose your home. Of course you should lose it. The present system is completely unfair to new players.

[GenJoe]

That's what I'm talking about. I've been suggesting that very same idea for a while now and most people don't want it. Not just the people that already have houses, even people that don't have houses because of the shortage, they still don't want houses to come with upkeep because they don't want to pay it.

Which has led me to believe that a significant portion of the people that complain about house shortage aren't only complaining about the lack of availability, but also, affordability. They don't want to pay the millions for a house, but still want a house to be around for them to buy in the months ahead when they finally save up enough for it. (usually small plots)

Nothing wrong with that mentality, it's just not what housing is in this game unfortunately. In FF14, housing is expensive and hard to get.. Not only do you need the money for it, you need to be among the first few to get there in order to make sure that you have a house available to buy.

If you've missed your chance, at least upkeep/relinquishing will open up plots for you to try again later. If you simply don't want to pay the millions for it, time to throw in the towel and get a private chamber.

[FJerome]

Maybe a hybrid system would be good - everyone seems to really care about being in the wards themselves, so maybe you have to pay rent to stay in your swank location.

If you don't pay rent you lose your plot location, the plot goes up for sale and your house gets moved to an instanced plot all by itself, accessible from that gate to nowhere that all the housing wards have and don't use.

[Terrini]

I scrimped and saved since I started this game and by the time I had 2.5million, personal housing became available and I was able to buy myself a small house that same day, spent all my money. I am not a serious crafter, and I only just got up to maybe 250k again? This als after scrimping and saving for a large FC house for my free company with my friends. And we don't have a master crafter or gatherer so we couldn't afford a rent on top of that scraping pennies to get by. There are the super rich that think it's chump change and there are the poor that had to work hard and scrape together everything they had in order toveven buy the houses we have. This proposed system would take homes away from people that worked hard for them. Just because the high end of players can afford this doesn't mean it should be enforced. I wouldn't mind an activity time limit though.

[Madjames]

Maybe a hybrid system would be good - everyone seems to really care about being in the wards themselves, so maybe you have to pay rent to stay in your swank location.

lose your plot location, the plot goes up for sale and your house gets moved to an instanced plot all by itself, accessible from that gate to nowhere that all the housing wards have and don't use.

Nope I do not agree with this. Instanced housing (Coming from Ultima Online and SWG) is not something I will stand behind, ever. SWTOR does it and its USELESS. Having a neighborhood and people to RP with and interact with is a good thing. Every night on my server in my neighborhood everyone stops by our local tavern and we all RP and have a good time. The FC makes its gil running its business this way and no other. Having instanced housing would make housing useless. What SE needs to do is make you have to log in once every 30 days and enter your house as it was in Ultima Online. If you didnt, your house would decay and someone else would get it.

In order to cater to the cry babys of such as system, SE should reimburse those who lose their homes like this with the money they spent on the PLOT and house fee. They will probably not come back and use the gil anyway and it would appeal to the cry babies who scream (WAHHH this isnt fair, I spent this much on an im game house and even though I am not pay or playing the game for MONTHS, the house is MINE and I do not want to lose my gil)

It took me 3 weeks to get one mil gil. I am still trying to get 20mil to get the LAST MEDIUM plot in my subdivision next to my FC's house. I will not stand by a gil upkeep cost. Sorry but I am one of those poor people that started this game a month ago and just hit 50 in my first toon a ninja and is leveling as fast as possible on his miner before the expac hits and not spending a dime on Anything in order to buy a house. My solution is a bit more fair to everyone involved and will keep the housing market going. A major feature in this game such as housing and everything associated with it is already expensive enough. A lot of crap is gated behind it. Coloring chocobos and everything else should NOT be only for the super rich.

That is my solution. After 30 days, BOOM house gone, gil reimbursed to Property Owner/FC Leader, plot goes back on the market at regular price (Meaning the depreciated one as it already deprecated once, no need to make it do it all over agian.)

[Nuinn]

That is my solution. After 30 days, BOOM house gone, gil reimbursed to Property Owner/FC Leader, plot goes back on the market at regular price (Meaning the depreciated one as it already deprecated once, no need to make it do it all over agian.)

Rather not. I have to be away from the game sometimes for 30+ days cause of travelling/work and I worked as hard for it as you.

How about SE admits they've made an utter crap of the housing system in general (even compared to f2p of the early 2000's) and fix the damn thing already?

[Coombah]

I agree with Terrini and Nuinn. The only way it would kinda be ok to remove someone's place would be a cancled account after so many days maybe. The real issue here is se stepping up and making more spots available.

[FJerome]

Nope I do not agree with this. Instanced housing (Coming from Ultima Online and SWG) is not something I will stand behind, ever. SWTOR does it and its USELESS. Having a neighborhood and people to RP with and interact with is a good thing.

Not everyone wants housing for RP, though, a lot of players just want access to the facilities gated behind owning one. Having an option of a more easily-achieved instanced plot would free up space for the people who do care - do you really want a neighbour who just bought that plot to grow onions, anyway?

[Elim]

No thank you. Just add more housing, or a real system to sell ones house. I'd sell my medium house if I saw a large for sale. I'm looking to upgrade...just no plots left.

If they did add tax they should only add it to new houses, because the current people bought their houses not agreeing to or expecting rent.

[StouterTaru]

They just need to weed out the unsubs. If their subscription expires or is cancelled, give them 35 days to resub before sending their crap to the calamity salvager.