I agree with a lot of your points but them taking out personal houses (and taking them away from people) would have been a catastrophe. (IMO) Heck even when they for a short amount of time introduced the new housing rules they did not take away the houses from those that owned too many.
For me they should introduce private instanced housing. With all the sizes and zones available. It would be awesome if we could buy a L house in each zone since its instanced thus people could own quite a lot of houses, while at the same time the wards still exist but instead of taking the houses away they just stop people from buying more private ones for the future and maybe give a compensation for everyone that switches their private house from wards directly to an instance. On top of that give FCs access to workshops in some city states and gardening plots in Gridania for everyone to use.
This way a FC does not need a house to get access to all the things behind it, people can all have as many big houses as housing zones exists. (Right now that would be like 4 large houses) And they would not lose it and have a huge gil sink on top of that. I would gladly give up my personal and FC house for that. But I would not give them up for something like an apartment.
I am quite sure that those that complain that the timer is bad if they want to take a break are just exactly wanting that: A break. Which means that they plan to return to the game. I mean we are not talking about a timer that is 90 days long or more, but something as short as 45 days which amounts to a bit more than one month breaks. Seeing how a patch takes at least 3 months to come out than this is way too low. Someone could have played the game for years constantly, own a house but just want to take one break between two patches. They simply cant..because that would be too long and they will lose their house that they have might used quite a lot and had planned to use it again after the break. Why would someone else deserve it more than them?