Suggestion: relocation should be subject to the same timer as first time buyers.

[8bitbort]

This would lengthen the amount of time it takes to fill empty plots.

Under the current system:
1. Players A, B, C, D have been camping a house 8 hours. Player E walks up and relocates.
2. Players A, B, C, D locate player E's old plot and 12 hours later, one of them wins it.
Total time a house stands unoccupied: 20 hours

Under your proposed system:
1. Players A, B, C, D have been camping a house 8 hours. Player E walks up and begins attempting to relocate.
2. After 4 hours, player E wins the house and relocates.
3. Players A, B, C, D locate player E's old plot and 12 hours later, one of them wins it.
Total time a house stands unoccupied: 24 hours

This isn't going to be the story with every timer-blocked relocation, but it will be the story with enough of them. Relocation-trains are frustrating enough to campers without making them take hours longer.

Under the current system, ideal relocations are snapped up in minutes, allowing people to return to the game. If a Mist 35 sat open for 8-22 hours with half the server camping it, the lost play-hours from everyone would be incalculable.

Camping itself is a poor system, and a miserable experience. Making every plot a camp every time seems more like a step backward than a step forward.

The problem with the current situation in your example is it suggests the average house-hopeful player can click a placard for 20 hours straight. This is incredibly unreasonable of an expectation. And again, if there wasn't such a MARKET for selling relocation rights, there wouldn't be such a burden on housing as a whole. I think you even said yourself that players would focus on camping the plot they actually want, rather than just trying to get something until they have the gil to talk someone into releasing the plot they actually want. Yes it would suck for players who already bought their "placeholder" house, but it levels the playing field significantly.

It makes the source plot available to be bought, albeit a timer.
If you were to "punish" re-locators

This isn't about punishing anything. This is leveling the playing field so that everyone has the same shot at "desirable" plots, and not just people who already got their foot in the door with a "placeholder" like goblet 22. In addition, this curbs a big segment of the market for selling relocations, which means people would camp the plot they actually want, instead of just camping "lol whatever" until they can hand 150 million gil off to a player to give them their ideal LB medium