I do think the devs definitely need to do something on the timers. Maybe drop a message in the chatlog when players logged in to forewarn that the house is going to be demolished in 3 days rather sending email notifications. People might not interpret the auto-demolition rule. And wasn't there a period of time auto-demolition was lifted? Players may not know that the auto demolition rule got reinstated earlier this year.

I don't think it's the OP fault to be honest. And I do hope the devs will return his housing items that he earned, one way or another.
This incident have happened to the OP, but it may happen to us. Think about how would you feel if the items you earned are lost permanently? I would definitely lose the motivation to start everything from scratch or even subscribe further. Some items may even not be obtainable anymore which is definitely painful just thinking about it. Hence, devs if you are reading this, please help out the OP who has been with your game for the past 1800 days or so.