Play the timers. Houses aren't likely to go up for sale until they've been open for at least 6+ hours. If you are there right when it vacates, you are wasting tons of time for no reason.

SE does need an entirely new system. The current one is awful. But, honestly, you can't blame SE for it.

They gave us housing. What did people do? They abused the system. They rushed to get houses. Then sold them for more than the house was worth. People were forced to pay more than what SE thought was proper. So now we end up with this clickbait system which is terrible.

If players had acted responsibly, instead of like greedy twerps, then it wouldn't have happened.

As for the rest, no, an FC is not entitled to a house over anyone else. Because there are far too many 1 person FC's out there. And that trend would continue if FC's got special priority over others.

One thing, I think that should be considered, is instanced housing combined with neighborhoods. Fix the look of a house based on it's area, at least for the exterior. However, the Placard now lists like an apartment, of who lives at that plot. When you go to the door, you get to select the interior you want to visit, same as apartments.

Give instanced outdoor areas of fixed size for small, medium, and large plots. You get the neighborhood effect of it all. But you also get more houses per ward. Imagine if every small could link to 5 instance small interiors, instead of just the one. You could expand housing a lot that way.

Of course, it would also help if SE actually cracked down on the people who own more than one home across their characters, by stripping them away. They shouldn't get to have that just because they had them in the past when it was allowed. Being grandfathered over is just so wrong. As wrong as the FC's that own multiple small houses instead of one FC house.