Technically, only Personal Houses were "everyone has the same odds".

For Free Companies, it is nothing like that.

Large Free Companies with a lot of wealth can stack the odds in their favor with the lottery system as it is.
It's painfully easy for a large free company to raise millions of gil. And they can have dozens of bids on a Small FC plot, stacking the odds in their favor.

While it's not as common, the same can be done for Medium or Large plots as well.

I should know. I fixed up a spreadsheet and tracked the Large plots twice this past week. First on Wednesday, and then after marking off all those with 7+ bids, I went back on Friday.

I identified the remaining plots with only 1-bid on each. I found the plot among those with the least bids across all wards.
I found the ward with the least overall bids with that plot.

I bid on that plot 4 times and nobody else bid after me. My four 47.5 million gil bids vs the single bid that was placed down first.

And I won it. Was it fair? Not really. The odds were 80% in my favor because it was 4-to-1.

People simply don't realize that supply isn't all that easy.