I'm always blown away whenever I see housing owned solely by players. My FC basically had to form Voltron with our wallets in order to get a small house on our server, and we didn't get to be picky with where we got it, either. All I can say is ask around to see if someone's willing to sell a plot they've already got.

That said, I'll agree that the Mog House system was pretty great, and It'd be nice if SE could implement something like that off of the current way inn rooms work, but I also know nothing about what kind of server strain that would cause.