There is not really a right answer to the housing system. The placard was horrendous. The lottery gets abused. Instanced houses makes it no different from your semi-deserted island called “sanctuary”. Having unlimited houses and giving them away to anyone that walks in and pays for one isn’t the solution either, although it would make pointless for those abusing the system and collecting entire wards just because.

Increasing the amount of houses one can bid, similar to the three weekly Cacpot tickets, could improve perception, in a sense, of one’s chances of success.

However exploitation is still here. It will always allows abuse by players paying multiple subscriptions and reselling the FC to whoever is willing to pay 10-1000x more than the actual plot value, then selling the gil for real money and cashing out to cover his/her expenses with the extra subscriptions. And to that, nothing much can be done: it is still a paying subscriber, regardless of where the payment comes from - including from the same bank account.

And if they truly, really, deeply want to fix this housing problem, then they have to go a much deeper rabbit hole: ask for valid government ID during account creation, so they can ensure multiple subscriptions from the very same person isn't allowed to buy more than one house in that realm. Which they never would pursue it: first, for legal reasons; second, for data security reasons; third, it would impact their revenue.

IMHO SqE has to first learn how to make the game dynamic, removing the loading when moving from zone A to B in an adjacent region, before they can tackle a more dynamic housing area with many more plots per ward, able to scale with how many houses are being demanded from players. Then the plot limits could be reviewed and more zones added into that ward, able to expand how many plots are available and therefore how many more houses are available.

That, and players learning not everything solves with the swipe of a plastic thing, and patience is a virtue.

And yes, I lost the lottery for the plots I bid on. Both personal and for the FC I’m in.