Decrease the demand for houses with taxes

[HeyMcFly]

Nah, We already pay a sub

A 100% better suggestion would be to just make instanced housing

Or make apartments better by making them equal to a private cottage (small house)

Or make more private plots available - or all of this

[Soge01]

*Throws your tea in the harbor's watery depths*

[Kenky]

*Throws your tea in the harbor's watery depths*

Roight! That's it! I know you ain't got a tea-dumping License.

You're getting a strongly-worded letter, young Sir/Madam!

[Adamantini]

Your idea will only worsen the amount of people using BOT or buying Gil through RMT.

Put a fee, and it will further encourage players to buy Gil, with that more BOTs will come, and the problem of houses will remain one way or another.

[Avoidy]

If the new goal is to decrease demand for housing, there's a much easier way to do it: make apartments more appealing. Up the furniture cap on apartments from 100 to, say, 300. Let people purchase upgrades if you have to. Implement a patio section for outdoor furniture and gardening. Make submarine ventures something anyone can do at an inn.
Basically, stop locking features behind owning a home, and a lot more people won't want one.

[RitsukoSonoda]

If the new goal is to decrease demand for housing, there's a much easier way to do it: make apartments more appealing. Up the furniture cap on apartments from 100 to, say, 300. Let people purchase upgrades if you have to. Implement a patio section for outdoor furniture and gardening. Make submarine ventures something anyone can do at an inn.
Basically, stop locking features behind owning a home, and a lot more people won't want one.

Submarine ventures are an FC thing though. The primary complaints are for private homes.

[Avoidy]

Submarine ventures are an FC thing though. The primary complaints are for private homes.

I'm sleepy and I keep editing this post to try and get my point across. Sorry if it changes a lot on your end.
Basically I think that if less people wanted an individual home, there wouldn't be as much demand for them, which would translate to individual wards feeling less of a pinch, which would lead to less people feeling compelled to make these fake FCs to break into the FC wards. The route we're going down right now has a bunch of shell FCs set to win a ton of FC ward real estate soon despite being an "FC" composed of like... 1 guy and his 3 alts. And these people would have to be stupid not to do submarine ventures as soon as they can; it's free money once you set it up. At that point, when we have a bunch of solo players doing ventures anyway, you'd be hard pressed to call it "an FC thing," and you might as well just make it a thing anyone can do.

Additionally, the majority of my post addressed private home issues because -- yeah, I'd rather see those addressed. I only brought up subs because I also know several people who legit just left their FC and made a fake FC because they wanted to do submarine ventures. So in that context, it really doesn't matter that it's an FC thing. It's a reason for people to want a limited resource, that could easily be addressed by just making it accessible through other means. Why is it bad for anyone to access a submarine from an inn, but it's okay for a bunch of fake one-man FCs to do it from their solo FC home? In my experience, the only people in love with this are the people making loadsa Gil from that system in the first place.

[SassyAssassin]

Dude no. Nope.

[Liam_Harper]

Additionally, the majority of my post addressed private home issues because -- yeah, I'd rather see those addressed. I only brought up subs because I also know several people who legit just left their FC and made a fake FC because they wanted to do submarine ventures. So in that context, it really doesn't matter that it's an FC thing. It's a reason for people to want a limited resource, that could easily be addressed by just making it accessible through other means. Why is it bad for anyone to access a submarine from an inn, but it's okay for a bunch of fake one-man FCs to do it from their solo FC home? In my experience, the only people in love with this are the people making loadsa Gil from that system in the first place.

If small FC's making a lot of gil are a problem, then put restrictions on it. One sub per 10 members up to a maximum of 4 submarines or something like that.

If submarines were made available to all players they would absolutely have to nerf all gil income from them. This would be a nasty blow to legitimate FC's. My own FC puts every bit of gil from our submarines back into the FC and it's an amazing positive, we have endless free food, pots, materia, chocobo items, various minions and furniture and events with lots of prizes and it would be a shame if all that was taken away because some players abused a system that should have been restricted properly in the first place.

I also wish people would stop joining FC's with leaders who treat the submarines as a personal income. It just encourages it. There are a ton of legitimate FC's where you can get your buffs and a lot of extra bonuses. There's no reason to park in a bad FC.

[Solarra]

No to taxation. It's bad enough we can lose our houses and furniture while paying a sub, no way would I endorse making the system even more punitive.
It would definitely encourage RMT and honestly I cannot see any benefit except to a handful of richer players.

FIX THE SUPPLY
That's the real issue, there are simply not enough houses for the player base.

Dig into that a little further and it turns out that desirable houses are in even shorter supply. Houses near the Market Board and Retainer bell with nice views are not exactly plentiful. Many plots in the wards would probably go unsold if it wasn't for the fact that housing is so scarce (looking at you, Goblet) but the poor design of the wards is something most of us overlook because getting any house is an achievement in itself.

If the devs can give everyone their own little instanced island, then they definitely had the resources to give us instanced houses. I can see no reason why instanced houses shouldn't be introduced alongside the wards, that way everyone's happy. The people who don't care about neighbourhoods can get an instanced house and the people who love the wards can continue with the system we have.