The only other game I've played with housing system was Mabinogi.

There they first had Housing which was not instanced. There were different housing areas (I think 4 total if i remember correctly) and you didn't buy a house really, it was more like a rent. First you would go to an available house and bid on it. If you won the bid you get to keep the house for 4 weeks and you would pay taxes once a week during this period. After the time expired you would take your belongings and try bidding on another house. You were able to decorate it to an extent, but frankly since you aren't keeping the house there wasn’t much incentive to decorating it. You may ask “What is the point of the house then?” Well they were basically retainers in a way. You would put items for sale as well as storing gold. I’ll leave a wiki link to it if anyone cares to read more on it http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Housing


Then there were Homesteads, which were instanced. They were free for anyone at early levels. You would receive a ticket to create one, and you could pick from three themes/environments (regular grassland, Desert, or Snowfield) It starts as a very tiny plot but you can level it up by doing activities such as farming and building. It would expand at certain levels as well as unlocking more selections of materials/fauna to add to it. One of the sad part of it is that even though you could add a house in the plot of land you couldn't go inside, and it didn't serve any purpose other than visual. Here is a link with more information on this one http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Homestead

Personally im hoping for Instanced in this game, I understand some people want to live close to each other and it would be nice to have both options, but I'm afraid that might not be possible (limitations and what not). It’s sad that we know nothing about this yet, and a lot of the statements made about it are confusing in which we don't know if they are referring to FC housing or personal rooms at times. Some clarification is really needed. Perhaps it really has been delayed yet again.