One free company owns 13 houses in one Empyreum ward on my server.

[Garten]

So "in theory" One account can have one personal and One FC house, in practice they can have one personal and 8 FC house per world, with Just One account. The problem Is that It is like the pvp afflatus bug that people was abusing in cristalline conflict. Since It was "se's fault" ppl were not punished for abusing It, but that does not change the fact that they were taking advantage of a BUG. PROOF: SE PATCHED IT

for the housing, they tried to patch It in the past (there was like a Little period of time, like a month or so) but something else risked to broke (there was the possibily that you had 2 characters as officier of 2 differenti guild, with an FC house, you were promoted in both and the game then didnt know what to do). So they reverted it

[Sotaris]

1 FC can only own 1 house. Get your fact straight.

[Garten]

1 FC can only own 1 house. Get your fact straight.

Op Is probably new and didnt know about FC "tags".. of course One FC can only own One house (except if It Is granfathered from old rules), but almost at 100% those "different" FCs with same tags belong to the same group or ppl.
Is It allowed? Yes
Is the system working as intended? Not so sure

[SweetEquity]

Obvious scamming aside

You visited the Discord which has a "Housing Enthusiast" section. (cute dog pic on your profile, btw) You were in the Discord with about 250 members listed. (or couldn't you figure out "role selection so you could actually see our very active group?) You were in the ward seeing at least 6 small properties STILL available but they're not good enough for you! You saw this and didn't bring this information here to tell a full story did you? You lied, the properties *mostly* have the same walls, but are not all the same furnishings, and not all the placards were identical. It's your right to come here and whine to the forums, but it's not okay to only tell part of the story while making false accusations. I wish SE would ban your rumor mongering. I will be submitting my harassment complaint to Discord.

[Nepentha]

This doesn't sound like 1 person owning all the houses. Likely a group of friends who did this. I have friends on another server that did something similar. They're all in different FCs, so they decided they wanted to be neighbors, bid in the lotto to relocate, and are all in the same vicinity of each other now. I suppose the only difference here is they kept their FC tags different.

[dspguy]

When SE announced the lottery system, the "good" of it (as far as FC houses go) was their requirement that FCs and their bidders be at least 30 days old. This got FC property to actual FCs.

The "bad" was that we didn't get a second lottery cycle due to the 0 winner bug until that 30 day moratorium on new shell FCs passed. And the "ugly" is that SE didn't change the ward restrictions earlier. This allowed for anybody that wanted an "easy house" to create shell FCs to buy them up.

Good idea. Bad execution.

[Themarvin]

Using loopholes = exploiting

Read up on it in the ToS

[LaylaTsarra]

The "bad" was that we didn't get a second lottery cycle due to the 0 winner bug until that 30 day moratorium on new shell FCs passed. And the "ugly" is that SE didn't change the ward restrictions earlier. This allowed for anybody that wanted an "easy house" to create shell FCs to buy them up.

That's always been the problem giving people who are willing to exploit the intent of 1 FC per server. They simply make it too easy for them to spin their web. This didn't happen with FCFS was in effect for the most part but only when FC moratoriums prevented private buyers from accessing the supply when FC's didn't require that time or that many houses as were set aside with lottery. This was certainly the case on Spriggan and Twintania where FC only sales were allowed for months before private sales began and those were fcfs with no restrictions.

Those who create shells to buy ONE house because SE is foolish enough to encourage that when their decisions aren't good with FC/Private splits but at least those are essentially going to a private buyer who is bypassing the intent of the rules yet not buying more than one.

[Yodada]

Using loopholes = exploiting

Read up on it in the ToS

Obtaining a company petition in Ul'dah, Limsa Lominsa, or Gridania.
Filling out the petition with the company's name and tag.
Get three signatures from three other player characters in the same server. (Level doesnt matter).
Return the petition and pay a 15,000 gil registration fee. Et Voila.
Wait 30 days.

What a shocking exploit. OMFG. The Worlds End is near.

[Jojoya]

It's not a single FC since FCs can only own one house and I highly doubt it has anything to do with RMT (RMT wouldn't want to attract attention in game).

It's more likely to be 13 FCs owned by the same player using 2 or more service accounts. Possibly they're doing it for workshop access, possibly they're doing it just to flaunt in the faces of SE and other players that it can be done. Some people are very petty that way.

Should they be doing it? No. Does SE allow them to do it? Yes. That "owned by buyer" loophole in the rules makes ownership of multiple FC houses on the same world "legal".

You can try opening a ticket to report it to SE but I doubt anything would get done. Housing issues have been pretty much hands off for the GM team in the past and I doubt that's changed. It's just another example of why SE needs to stop dumping resources into wards and work on a fully instanced system that allows everyone to get a house regardless of what other players have.

If you do choose to open a ticket to report it, make note of what date each FC was opened and how many members it currently has (you can get the information by viewing the company profile at the placard). Maybe you'll get lucky and the GMs have been given enough authority in housing matters to decide it is a violation of the ToS. I still doubt it though.