Ok so looks like people are still taking advantage and getting multiple houses.

[Jojoya]

It happens because there's no competition for FC plots, workshops can be lucrative and the player involved will have multiple service accounts to assist in obtaining all those houses (though I doubt very much each is on a separate service account)

SE chose to leave loopholes in the system so players will naturally take advantage. Sometimes I don't think it's as much to upset other players (though it obviously does) but rather to rub in SE's face how idiotic their attempts to automate policing of the system are and to prove that SE does not actually care about their own rules.

Have a close look at where that ward is:
>The Goblet

The only new plots added was the new housing area in Ishgard. Ward 2 of the Goblet has existed since the day housing was first released to this game years ago. All those empty plots are presumably caused by people moving to Ishgard, but obviously that FC is staying there because they own multiple houses there and they can not move those because if they tried to move them the "only one house per FC" rule that exists would stop them. But back when housing was first released, different rules applied, including being able to own multiple houses both privately an as a Free Company. People who obtained multiple houses legally back then did not lose them when the rules changed, since it would be pretty awful to punish people for doing something that was 100% okay when they did it.

Hope that clears up the confusion.

Sephorit is one of the Materia worlds that just opened in January. None of their housing was available until this patch. It is impossible for any of that to be grandfathered.

Hope that clears up your confusion.

[KuroMaboroshi]

Sephorit is one of the Materia worlds that just opened in January. None of their housing was available until this patch. It is impossible for any of that to be grandfathered.

Hope that clears up your confusion.

It does indeed. I don't know all the server names by heart, so I wasn't aware this on is on OCE. In that case, consider my attempt at an explanation retracted and I would also be curious to know how this happened.

[Jojoya]

It does indeed. I don't know all the server names by heart, so I wasn't aware this on is on OCE. In that case, consider my attempt at an explanation retracted and I would also be curious to know how this happened.

Because SE allows it.

The restriction is that an account does not have a character on the same account that "owns as buyer" a FC house on the same world. "Owns as buyer" means the character must be in a FC and was the purchaser of the house that FC owns. If the character leaves that FC, it no longer "owns as buyer" and so any character on the account (including that one) is able to purchase another FC house as long as they have been in their current FC at least 30 days.

It does take multiple service accounts to pull off but it's "legal" under the stated rules. Multiple house ownership has never stopped being a thing. SE has only made it more difficult to accomplish.

Which raises the question why there are so many FCs with the same tag winning the lottery in places such as the goblet, even with the 30 days and 4 fc member rule measure in place, they were prepared for this housing measure prior of release it almost seem like.

I've no doubt they started making plans back in November when the new data center was announced and were ready to start setting up characters and FCs when it opened in January. They couldn't afford to wait since SE hadn't released the information about how long the new member period would last.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Potential loopholes in the rules were very easy to spot. Of course there were people ready to capitalize on them with SE's lack of past enforcement of housing rules. They know they would not be stopped, nor would anything be taken away from them.

SE probably felt that the lottery RNG would reduce the occurrences but they also failed to realize the demand for FC housing just is not there. There is no RNG when there is no competition for the plots. Setting aside 18 wards was a field day for those prepared, especially on a new data center where demand was almost non-existent compared to the supply.