Materia will also be operating under the new system where some wards are FC and others are personal. That's going to help things fill faster.
I'm still very concerned about YoshiP's comment during the Live Letter that there will be more FC wards than personal wards. If he was just referring to Empyreum, I get it even if I still don't agree. They want to make certain any FCs ready to buy can get a house because of FC content that requires a house to access. If he was referring to all housing districts, ouch.
The demand for FC housing (at least by genuine FCs) just is not that high. If it was, we wouldn't have seen new wards in the past remain mostly empty until the personal moratorium was lifted. I remember doing a census back in 2019 a few weeks before 5.1 was released and seeing all the empty plots still left on Spriggan and Twintania (not to mention the wards that were being filled up by the shells FCs).
Hopefully the weighting toward FCs will only last the first 4 lottery periods, and we'll see some FC wards switched to personal after that (when 6.15 would release if it's the usual 6-7 weeks we've seen in the past). It's demoralizing when there are plots sitting vacant and there are players are ready to buy but can't because SE has locked access to FCs that have already purchased a house if they want Certainly SE should keep some wards reserved for FCs at all times but when FCs are historically about 30% of the house owners, it should be 30% of wards.