Whoa, people are really against improving apartments? I'm surprised.

Right now, housing could stand to be less in demand, and apartments could stand to be more in demand, so I think SOME sort of improvement to apartments is in order. Personally, I'm in favor of decoupling the features - gardening, workshops - from houses in general, because locking content behind a limited-quantity luxury item doesn't sit right with me. And I think purchasable upgrades to apartments would be a nice feature, as well as a decent gil sink (say you start with the current apartment size and you can upgrade to a small house size for the price of a small house, etc, plus a cost for a small garden area and so on). The fact that you can have both an apartment AND a house and the fact that there are definitely people who enjoy the ward system, would be enough to ensure that the wards are filled while everyone can enjoy all the benefits of housing as long as they save up enough gil.