Making a Fairer Housing System

[MilaDazol]

Tenants
Tenants seem to have little, if any security. Since the house will be reclaimed if the owner is inactive, regardless of how active the tenants are, tenants stand to lose not only access to a house and gardens they might be using but also any items of furniture that break on removal. Again, it's unfair.

Tenants will never be able to reset the timer, because personal housing is a luxury contrary to FC housing which is a necessity, so that way the plots can be free again faster.

[Solarra]

I think the tenant system needs looking at because it puts people in a position where what happens to their belongs depends entirely on the behaviour of another player. The owner goes inactive, they lose all the fixtures in their room, possibly some furniture along with access to a house.

Tenancy is a good stop-gap while houses are in such desperately short supply. I can see that allowing tenants to take over a house where the owner goes inactive or wants to relinquish could be very problematic and open to abuse, so I understand why Square don't allow it.
However, I don't see why they cannot save the entire contents of a tenant's room and store it indefinitely so they can become a tenant elsewhere or transfer all their stuff to the new apartment housing when it becomes available. Same with people who are kicked from their FC.

[worldofneil]

Sorry, but I disagree that any changes are needed for tennants. Tennancy was only added because people wanted to share a house with a partner or friend and I think a lot of people were probably surprised when they allowed it to be shared with 3 other people instead of just 1. Ultimately though, it is the still the house of the person who's name is on the deed.

If it's a group of people then they should be using a FC house, although having the option to change a personal house to an FC house (one-way only) would be brilliant.

[Powe]

I read that people are worried about the houses not being enough to stabilize the economy, why not make it where you have to pay a monthly bill for the house.

[Neira]

Shared housing with a shared decay timer had the potential to be a genuine remedy to the current system. If every personal house out there all of a sudden had three more people using it and able to keep it as their own, there would be considerably fewer people actually needing a house. Yes, it would have the potential to be abused in the fact that someone could refresh it for all four people, but that's still one person who is playing and paying for that house compared to the glaring flaw with hundreds of homes purchased for resale with no use at all.

They wouldn't have literally quadrupled the number of home owners, but I don't think saying it's been doubled would be unreasonable. It also didn't take extra server space, and every ward addition will compound the number of home owners. Yet, with the way shared housing currently works, people can literally watch their homes be scheduled for demolition because the one owner hasn't logged on, even if the three tenants are there constantly.

It just seems to me that it's only about the money in this case.

[Andrea]

I think the tenant system needs looking at because it puts people in a position where what happens to their belongs depends entirely on the behaviour of another player. The owner goes inactive, they lose all the fixtures in their room, possibly some furniture along with access to a house.

Outside of a window to get their stuff if the house goes I dont think tenants need anything else.

They didn't purchase the house, they are trusting the owner and imo shouldn't be able to reset the timer.

[Victoria_Silverdawn]

They never confirmed that the apartment style was going to be Ishgard housing as far as I'm aware did they. I could have sworn it was coming before Ishgard. Do you have a source?

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXVI Digest (01/12/2016)

0:33:32
Q: Auto-reclamation for housing starts this month, but can you tell us if there will be any future additions of plots?
A: We'll be increasing the number of plots for existing housing areas in Patch 3.3. After we expand those areas, we'll add apartment-style housing in Ishgard areas afterwards, starting with one apartment-style building which will hold about 512 residences. We’re also planning to make chocobo stables available for use to residents of apartment-style housing. Gardening patches are still proving somewhat difficult, but we’re currently developing new “planter pots” that will allow gardening

[Laraul]

A: We'll be increasing the number of plots for existing housing areas in Patch 3.3. After we expand those areas, we'll add apartment-style housing in Ishgard areas afterwards, starting with one apartment-style building which will hold about 512 residences.

They'll start with one building that holds 512 residents, and that'll be the end of it. No more units after that... why 512 units and not 5120 units? Why are they unwilling to provide ways to allow players to easily reclaim 80% of the cost their current residence? What are they so afraid of? that it would be the first thing that hackers would try to obtain? Or people exploiting the system by selling there residence and then claiming the account was hacked to reclaim the everything? Sure it's possible. But it's not going to destroy the economy. People always complain about the economy, regardless? Or more to the point, people always complain? As I am doing right now?

[Andrea]

Personally I feel that when they implemented private rooms they should of allowed everyone to have one at the rising stone as well as a garden plot near the entrance to Mor Dhona.

Would it have been an amazing way to give everyone houses? No but at least people wouldn't:

1, Feel they need to join an fc to have a private room.
2, Potentially lose that private room due to stuff happening outside their control
3, Everyone would have access to gardening instead of the few who either own houses or are lucky enough to be given access to their fcs one.

Hell It would have even kinda made sense from a story point you having a room at the scions base of operations.

[crc0427]

They need to get on the ball with the housing move feature. My FC has been waiting over a year for this.