How to Fix Housing Without Everyone Freaking Out

[Anova]

I added some red edits to my original. See if they seem more workable now?

Ooh, was not expecting this. Thanks for going to the trouble of highlighting the changes.

2. As for these revisions, I think I understand where you're going with that example. Certainly, I can see how it's upsetting for a house owner to buy a house and never use it. It's like a slap in the face of everyone who does want housing.
I still don't see how this could be enforced though. Sure, we could devote data to tracking it for all players and do a boolean check for all those conditions, but there's probably a time limit. You can't stop players from buying a house forever if they ever join a fc with a house, and you can't stop players from making alts. You can make it very difficult, like say a month between leaving a fc and a new housing purchase, but that's only going to punish those FCs who can't afford to pay for a voip (mostly ps players who have to use a phone app and the servers for those usually charge monthly fees for voip).
Also, I know a few of those alt players who bought the house for their FC earlier, watched the FC die for unintentional reasons, joined a new FC and are collecting money to buy the house back as private housing for sentimental reasons. It's a little selfish, but it's not exactly malignant or dishonest. The biggest cause for some players just holding on to houses is because houses are so difficult to get that this is probably their only chance to get one. If you were suddenly offered the chance to buy a house and only needed 5 million more gil to get it, you'd probably hang on to that reservation for as long as you could.

3. Yeah, got nothing to explain this except on the off-chance everyone in that FC is a Seawolf Roe. Those RP names are a weird combination of Polish, Welsh, and Chinese Gold Farmer. Keep in mind Gold Farmers are rather notorious for using keyloggers to steal accounts, so it's possible someone bought gil from them for the house and then a gold farmer hijacked their account later on. Still doesn't explain why SE hasn't punished them yet though.

[Xerius]

what's with the furniture? some of them are really rare and expensive. okay, they can be stored at some NPC, but the most expensive furniture will be destroyed if you remove them.

don't get me wrong: i have nothing against taken the houses from afk people away and destroy their furniture -

but i don't see how your idea of a fix will prevent that everyone will freak out.

Is something not better than nothing? It doesn't matter how hard you try. There's always going to be some small marginal niche of people that will be unhappy no matter what you give them.

I feel like getting 80% of the money you put into a house is enough to outweigh the costs of the furniture that you completely forgot you had in your 6 month hiatus.