Except those 18,000 players aren't going to have 4300 personal houses to compete over. They're going to have 6-8 a week, or about 400 a year.
Even Ishgard is only going to add another 1440 houses if it opens as a standard housing district with the same number of wards we currently have in the other districts.
And 480 smalls are not going to last any longer with only 8,000 competing for them than they would with 18,000. You've still got thousands of potential buyers rushing in hoping they'll get one before they're sold out.
The people who are currently huddled like seagulls on empty plots are still going to be huddled like seagulls on empty plots because they already own them. SE isn't going to make the purchase price increase retroactive then take houses away from those who don't pay up any more than they're going to take away grandfathered multiple houses.
It's not going to stop more players from buying then sitting on unused plots because they've got nothing better to spend the gil on and once they've paid that one time price it's theirs. They don't have to pay another gil.
Increasing prices does nothing to make it next to impossible to resell for profit when players don't have any other substantial purchases to make in this game other than a house and the number of available houses is still much smaller than the number of players able to buy.
There is too much gil being generated on a daily basis and nothing significant taking that gil back out of the system.
"That why we should increase house prices - to take that gil out of the system!"
That only works if there is a house available for every player with the gil to buy. If they can't buy, the gil continues to accumulate in the system.
Right now, only 6-8 players per world get a chance to buy each week. That's not much of a gil sink when you're talking 18,000 players. It would take 43 years for every player to finally have a chance to buy a house at that rate.
If SE doesn't fix the supply problem, increasing the price accomplishes nothing.
I can see them increasing the prices if they don't solve the supply problem, though I don't see them being increased to the amounts that Catstab is suggesting.
You're right that they're not going to limit housing to the rich but then what is rich these days?
Where are they going to go with this system to address the obvious flaws when it comes to making it engaging content for the entire player base instead of just the small minority that gets lucky? We'll have to wait and see.