A Warning for Buyers

[Sylfaein]

It will be a LONG wait. Probably years, but maybe by then I'll have a lot of money saved up and can actually afford one.

Not necessarily. I saved up for a few weeks (between 3-4), and ended up paying someone 2M gil to relinquish a small on Exodus (medium server), then bought the lot for 3.6M. You just have to keep an eye on the market.

[LunaJoy]

I'm so sorry that that happened to you! I've seen party finders up offering to sell houses and I have always been confused by what exactly they are selling. It makes sense now that they are charging that much gil just to relinquish the land, not for you actually purchase the plot. They should be more clear in their details, as I'm sure there are a lot people out there doing this.

[Sylfaein]

Unfortunately, you're out of luck on this one. The seller was legit, AND selling the place at a huge discount, no less. On highly populated servers, people are asking up to two and three times the value of the lot, just to relinquish it.

As someone who recently bough a house from another player, I can tell you how it goes down:
You pay the owner to relinquish. They demolish their house, and relinquish the land. You HURRY to buy it off the plaque (it's open to anyone, so someone watching could rush in and grab it). THEN you own it and build on it.

At this time, there is no way to directly transfer a house or plot from one player/FC to another.

It's important to know the prices of land, as well:
http://imgur.com/a/n7wzC#2 for housing grades my lot.
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Personal_Housing for lot prices by server.
Combining these resources will give you the price of most land plots.

[Sakuraluna]

Idk, the whole party finder race to be the first sounds off to me though. Like you could do your research and be prepared, and be the first to trade the Gil, but once that's done it would be a race to be first to the market to buy the plot because unlike with a private exchange, everyone who looks at PF at that time knows that plot is about to be relinquished right then.

Outside of that, you're not buying a house from that player, you're only paying them to free up the plot as there isn't currently a way to directly transfer a house from one character to another outside of leadership of an FC with housing being passed to you. But if he never explicitly stated that until after accepting the Gil you may have grounds to stand on but it would ultimately depend on the gm's decision since SE have been very clear on how housing can be obtained even if the seller wasn't. Good luck on that, but you're right, it does pay to do research.

[Sylfaein]

Idk, the whole party finder race to be the first sounds off to me though.

I don't think so. Sounds like the guy just wanted to make a quick sale. If he was only asking 3M and not more or "best offer", he may have needed quick cash, or been quitting the game. Without the option to haggle and for such a low price, it seems practical to say "first here gets it".

[Sakuraluna]

I don't think so. Sounds like the guy just wanted to make a quick sale. If he was only asking 3M and not more or "best offer", he may have needed quick cash, or been quitting the game. Without the option to haggle and for such a low price, it seems practical to say "first here gets it".

I get what you're saying and I agree, but I guess my line of reasoning was that putting it up in party finder the way OP described is basically advertising to the server that this is happening right now. If someone really wanted to, had the gil to buy and didn't feel like paying to have a plot relinquished, they could just camp the market board until it shows up and potentially grab it before the hopeful buyer can, whether or not that person is connected with the seller. GMs wouldn't be able to do anything about that and neither would the original buyer or seller. That's why I said it sounded iffy to me.

[Sylfaein]

I get what you're saying and I agree, but I guess my line of reasoning was that putting it up in party finder the way OP described is basically advertising to the server that this is happening right now. If someone really wanted to, had the gil to buy and didn't feel like paying to have a plot relinquished, they could just camp the market board until it shows up and potentially grab it before the hopeful buyer can, whether or not that person is connected with the seller. GMs wouldn't be able to do anything about that and neither would the original buyer or seller. That's why I said it sounded iffy to me.

They would have to know exactly where the plot was to be able to do that. It COULD be done, but the sneakthief would have to be able to track down the plot between all 3 cities and all their wards AND get there efore the buyer could take it off the plaque. I'm assuming that the seller didn't put ward and plot number in the ad, of course.

[LiliaLia]

I'm really sorry for your misunderstanding. It doesn't sound like the person had any intention to deceive you though, they just assumed that you knew "buying" a house meant that you are paying them to relinquish the land.

I think this really ought to serve as a warning to sellers to make sure that the buyers they find are actually able to afford the land and understand what it is that they're buying. But at least understand that relinquishing their land for 3 million was already a huge deficit to them, so expecting them to refund your gil because of your mistake is problematic.

This is kind of a lose/lose situation that arose from a misunderstanding, not a scam. The only proper way to fix it would be to give the sellers their land back and give you your money back, which hopefully SE can do.

[Jpec07]

This is kind of a lose/lose situation that arose from a misunderstanding, not a scam. The only proper way to fix it would be to give the sellers their land back and give you your money back, which hopefully SE can do.

I'm not holding my breath on this one. The land was already purchased by another player, and I doubt if SE'd take it away from them.

[Eye_Gore]

Its very vague, but the resident caretaker in each housing ward kind of tells you how to buy a house. Couple things he has questions for is buying and relinquishing property. He does say you can only buy an unowned property, that coupled with relinquishing in would give somewhat of an idea, as there is no mention of player to player transactions. As for pricing, yes there is no values in game unless there is a plot for sale. Thing is it varies by world and where the plot is. It will also drop every 6 hours until it hits its bottom value. Not that any of this helps, just an FYI.