Every house, be it FC or personal, should have been instanced content from day 1. The design they have set up right now is literal garbage for a game with the amount of suscribers they have. To keep the "neighbourhood" feeling they could have added different areas from which to access each set of instanced houses, shared between them all, with the marketing NPCs, the marketboard, aetherytes, etc outside to keep people in the same neighbourhood interacting. If you could set it so access to your plot of land was public or private people could still see your house decoration, etc.

It does boggle the mind that they designed such a terrible housing system, and even more so that people keep defending them. Apartments could still be a thing to buy cheaply, but different house sizes, garden size, sea/mountain views and other options should just increase the base cost of the house. It's not rocket science...