Why is player housing so coveted in the community?

[hagare]

There are better examples like Wildstar.

Or Rift

Also, I would rather have identical looking houses than all the problems we have faced in XIV over the years:
1. Majority of NA players do not have access to limited ward housing.

2. RMT house resales are profitable because of the artificial scarcity. You think they would be so profitable if supply was abundant?

3. The prevalent use of third-party tools like placard clickers, 24/7 ward scanning bots which near instantly relocated into open mediums/larges before lottery was implemented.

is 2 and ESPECIALLY 3 still happening?
Oh wait, BEFORE lottery. Then why even include it?
and is 2 still happening even after 3 became a non problem?

[Jojoya]

is 2 and ESPECIALLY 3 still happening?
Oh wait, BEFORE lottery. Then why even include it?
and is 2 still happening even after 3 became a non problem?

The RMT sales are most definitely still happening. Many thought they might disappear due to the 30 day waiting period for FC. The lack of supply for personal houses gave RMT new life instead. Some players would happily choose to pay real money and wait 30 days to get their house over never getting a house at all. Empyreum houses on the Crystal data center were seen on one resale site listed at US$400-US$1300 depending on size and plot location. A few Shiro listings in the same range were also seen after plots in the other housing districts started opening up through relocation.

The click bots are obviously pointless under the lottery but if SE were to choose to use FCFS again they would be back (SE has said they might use it again for some wards in the future). The scanning mods could still be handy to more rapidly find what's currently available in the lottery so it's hard to say if those are still getting used.

[Amenara]

The RMT sales are most definitely still happening. Many thought they might disappear due to the 30 day waiting period for FC. The lack of supply for personal houses gave RMT new life instead. Some players would happily choose to pay real money and wait 30 days to get their house over never getting a house at all. Empyreum houses on the Crystal data center were seen on one resale site listed at US$400-US$1300 depending on size and plot location. A few Shiro listings in the same range were also seen after plots in the other housing districts started opening up through relocation.

The click bots are obviously pointless under the lottery but if SE were to choose to use FCFS again they would be back (SE has said they might use it again for some wards in the future). The scanning mods could still be handy to more rapidly find what's currently available in the lottery so it's hard to say if those are still getting used.

Wonder how long till SE enforces that part of the ToS...

[TwistedTea]

is 2 and ESPECIALLY 3 still happening?
Oh wait, BEFORE lottery. Then why even include it?
and is 2 still happening even after 3 became a non problem?

As Jojoya has already addressed your points, I think you're missing the larger point that I was trying to get at.

FFXIV's housing problems over nearly 10 years are due either to a lack of foresight by SE or devs who think they know better despite the reality of the situation in terms of access for the majority of players. Maybe both.

Let's briefly go through all the problems, limited ward housing, has faced since it was introduced nearly a decade ago:

1. Limited ward housing consumes more server resources as the exteriors of houses/wards are always loaded.
This is also the reason why adding new wards is not a scalable, long-term solution.

2. Auto-demolition is a logical consequence of limited ward housing.

3. Prior to the hidden placard timer being introduced, getting ward houses was a matter of luck to be on the right server at the right time, beating lobby errors, login q to land rush and competing against bots/housing resellers.

4. The hidden placard timer incentivized unhealthy behaviors such as camping for hours, Repetitive strain injury (RSI) and incentivizing the use of third-party tools.
Even if you camped during "prime time", on high pop servers, winning a plot still came down to an awful amount of luck. The hidden timer was a band-aid which did not respect players' time.

5. While the hidden placard timer was around, there were 24/7 ward scanning bots who would near instantly relocate into mediums/larges.

6. RMT/housing resale - as previously mentioned is profitable because of the artificial scarcity SE has implemented with limited ward housing. If there was an abundant/saturated supply of houses - RMT housing resale would not be profitable.

7. The lottery system made it slightly fairer for legit human players but does not address the supply problem.

The supply problem, especially on medium-high pop NA servers, will never be adequate for every individual player. Lodestone data indicates the average NA server has around 20k active characters. There are currently 7200 ward houses per server.

Adding new wards to address this disparity in supply is not a good long-term scalable solution as mentioned in #1

tldr: XIV's housing problems come down to the fundamental nature of limited ward housing. Limited ward housing, has required so many band-aids, over the years, to keep it going because it was not designed as a scalable long-term solution.

Introducing a fully instanced housing system, seems to be the best long-term scalable solution.