It seems SE sees apartments as Housing

[Jojoya]

No, apartments really ARE bad compared to houses. Less functionality (for some of us having other players be able to interact with our apartments IS important), and MUCH less space. Those tiny little boxes restrict people from being able to access a lot of décor styles. Try putting even a single room into an apartment and suddenly you have a LOT less space on your hands. Now, apartments would not be so bad if they were made larger and were allowed access by more tenants. Until they are revamped to be something other than the single-person coffins that they are (a bit of hyperbole here but not far off the mark), people will always go for houses first and foremost.

Then you're another player that has never given apartments are fair chance. I've seen apartments decorated in wonderful ways compared to houses that have a few items slapped down then been ignored.

They are not bad. They just aren't as good. It's like saying vanilla ice cream is bad because it's not a hot fudge sundae. No. The vanilla ice cream isn't bad. It's still good. It's just not as good as the hot fudge sundae. If you can't get the hot fudge sundae, the vanilla ice cream can still be satisfying.

It's crap. As a game feature, it's crap. And I'm sick of hearing these mental-gymnastics used to excuse it. Apartments fundamentally suck as "housing" and there's zero excuse for not allowing everyone to get full sized, full-feature houses through sufficient investment into the game.

I agree that that every player should be able to get a house. I've been pushing for that for years.

It is not possible at this point in the game.

If players aren't going to at least utilize what instanced housing is available when they are unable to get a ward house, then SE has no reason to improve the instanced housing system. They're going to stick to the ward system and there will always be players who are unable to get a house because there's no realistic way to expand the ward system big enough to satisfy demand.

I think it could be a double edged sword if they do actively start promoting apartments in that we could end up with apartments also being filled up to capacity due to more players wanting to participate in the system not knowing they exist and then be in the same spot we are now with the lack of houses. Do I think that would realistically happen? Probably not. I think the other issue is that more people will participate and realize they, like me, want more which will exacerbate the current supply issues.

When SE introduced apartments to the game, they clearly stated that it would be far easier for them to increase the number of apartments per building compared to the effort needed to increase the number of wards.

The only reason we haven't seen it happen yet is because Balmung has been the only world with enough housing demand to fill all their apartments.

If more worlds were facing the same situation, they would be much more likely to take action.

I agree with apartments being a part of the housing system, I disagree with the sentiment of "stop being picky". Apartments are objectively inferior to owning a house in the game, that is why people are complaining about house availability.

But their comment does point out why players need to stop saying "we need more housing" and start saying "we need more houses". We've got the housing and few of them are using it because they're holding out for a house.

#FFXIV-houses-fix-the-supply

It's funny because the picture OP posted is written to imply that players who buy this game can easily obtain both forms of housing. Phrasing like "Let's build a house alone or together with friends! You can also decorate your own room." implies that on top of building a home, you can also have an apartment.
For this to be an honest ad that tempers people's expectations to reality, the actual picture of an outdoor housing plot should be nuked and replaced with a picture of the apartment interior. Use of the word "mansion" should be removed as well, because let's be real nobody's getting one of those.

This is the rare moment where the English translation being vague and radically different from every other version actually works in its favor a little bit. You can't define a "little slice of Eorzea," so fans have less room to be upset when the house they expected to own never comes to fruition. Players in other languages however, have absolutely been misled by this ad in particular, assuming the translations I'm reading in your pic are accurate.

Any advertising comes with the drawback of supply not being sufficient for the demand created by the advertising.

The problem is they aren't doing a good job of promoting what is definitely available and instead focus on the might be available.

Technically even an apartment could be considered a "little slice of Eorzea" but it's definitely not going to raise the same response as a house.