[REQUEST] Housing Market Board

[Erim-Nelhah]

With all the new housing plots opening up, I predict there will be a lot of people buying and selling plots in the near future. I also predict that there will always be a housing market in FFXIV, regardless of whether or not FFXIV is a "real-estate simulator". Until an official means of buying/selling housing becomes available, people will simply use unofficial out-of-game methods to facilitate housing sales.

With that in mind, I'd like to suggest a new feature: A housing market board. Players could put their plots (or houses if allowed) up for sale on said board, and other players could buy them from it. Of course, there should be a seller-side "market tax" of about 10% of the price of the plot. There would be no buyer-side "market tax", but you would only be able to buy houses in a specific district from that district's housing market board.

Thoughts?

--Erim Nelhah

[MaikoRaines]

So basically the cost of the house + a land transfer tax.

It could work.

[saberchic]

If they do this, I would like for SE to limit the amount of money that a plot could sell for. some sort of regulations needs to happen with this. The prices I've seen people asking are outrageous.

[Erim-Nelhah]

I went through a few proposals in my mind before making my OP. One thing that did cross my mind was placing limits on the amounts housing could sell for. Unfortunately, if that is done, and the limits aren't high enough that the demand of the people who can afford the limit is less than or equal to the supply of plots for sale, people will still resort to out-of-game methods of transferring plots. Meaning that the limit would have to be at least as high as the "outrageous prices" you're seeing or the system would fail.

--Erim Nelhah

[Lan_Mantear]

Just put a 'Cool Down' period on plots where it can't be bought for X days, once it has been relinquished. That will really hamper the flipping of houses market. Who is going to pay 60 million for someone to relinquish a house, and risk the chance of someone else buying the lot 3 days later?

Doesn't make sense why SE doesn't already have this. They have it for pretty much everything else.

[Rawrz]

My personal belief is that you don't own the property. You own the non-transferable rights to use the property.

I think they should offer an instant reclaim system, that can be activated talking to a dedicated housing NPC or when trying to upgrade/downsize to a different house. 80% of your initial investment returned. (I also think there should be a 3 day waiting period to confirm the reclamation, in order to help prevent scammers,)
Then the house should be set on hold for 12 hours, with a notification board identifying all houses that are set to be open to resale. Talking to this NPC board could also add these housing timers to your timer section.
It should be made clear that the buying and selling of houses to other players is against the ToS upon log in for 3.3 and each purchase/sale of a house thereafter.

Just my view of it.

[Erim-Nelhah]

I'm not sure why you think that buying and selling housing between players is, in and of itself, bad. I don't like that players will be able to "flip" houses in 3.3, but while I suspect there may be a few bans for it (mostly because of people discussing details of the transaction in-game), most of the transactions will go through without incident. After that, it's already too late. Short of implementing unlimited housing, there's very little SQEX can do to stop people from selling plots.

Yes, I support unlimited housing. This, however, isn't coming in the near future - the only thing on the horizon that might help is Apartments, which currently don't have yards (or balconies - hint, hint) and thus can't be used for gardening or raising/dyeing your chocobo. If a proper indoor planter or the ability to have a miniature garden patch in your apartment is implemented, and Apartments are either unlimited or so numerous that they might as well be, then this idea can be tabled indefinitely (you can always either marry someone with a house or join an FC that has a house in order to do stuff with your chocobo).

--Erim Nelhah

[Solarra]

Yes, I support unlimited housing. This, however, isn't coming in the near future - the only thing on the horizon that might help is Apartments, which currently don't have yards (or balconies - hint, hint) and thus can't be used for gardening or raising/dyeing your chocobo.

Balconies is a great idea! Add a communal stable for the chocos to the building (optional one-time payment lets you stable your choco) and apartments would start to look very attractive.
At the moment, I can only see people going for them if they have no other option and regarding them as a temporary fix rather than a permanent home.

I'm not sure what the thinking is behind effectively creating a two-tier system where players with houses get to garden and train their chocos and players who buy apartments don't.

[Erim-Nelhah]

Balconies is a great idea! Add a communal stable for the chocos to the building (optional one-time payment lets you stable your choco) and apartments would start to look very attractive.
At the moment, I can only see people going for them if they have no other option and regarding them as a temporary fix rather than a permanent home.

I'm not sure what the thinking is behind effectively creating a two-tier system where players with houses get to garden and train their chocos and players who buy apartments don't.

I agree, and good idea on the chocobo stables thing.

In any case, since I forgot to state this in my previous reply, my opinion stands: Until a solution for (virtually) unlimited housing with real gardens is implemented there needs to be a legit way for players to buy/sell houses among themselves - not to turn FFXIV into a real-estate simulator, but to prevent scams. Making it so that it's actually impossible to do will only result in angry players.

As a note to the naysayers above: I stand to gain little or nothing from this atm. I don't even have enough gil on hand to purchase a room in an fc house atm, much less to buy an actual house. The only benefit I'd gain from it is the ability to buy a house securely in the future if I did manage to get the gil.

--Erim Nelhah