Would a raffle system be that hard?

[Barwara]

The house shortage is more an illusion, than what it seem, if you look at wards, then often you see most of them is ghost towns, some further requirements could be set in place, to be able to keep a house, in form of a monthly upkeep, aka paying rent... large 1million, medium 750K and small 250K per month, and that would go for both player and FC houses, not having enough gil in your inventory, and you will get a 72 hour eviction notice, in which you can of course pay the rent, including an additional fee as for being late to, just a suggestion.

I don't think this would change anything when it comes to inactive houses. 250k-1mil is probably pocket change for players with a fortune (and I bet most of the people owning/decorating houses are quite wealthy considering how expansive it is to buy, and decorate, said house). Just as like for the demolition timer, it would be easy for them to just drop that amount every month even if they aren't super active, and it would probably be easy for them to procure that money if they really needed to.

I don't think there is a perfect solution for ward houses. They will always be in shortage because of server capacity, always in demand, always hard to snatch. They should be subject to a demolition timer for sure because otherwise no plot will ever free itself and you'll never have a chance to get one. But if there were instanced houses, at least you'd be able to get one and not worry about a demolition timer, and still have the choice of owning a house in a ward that you'd have to 'upkeep'. It's the best compromise I see.