I want to buy a house/plot of land but for instance went to the Lavender area and yea they show you hundreds of houses but they all seemed to be owned by somebody.

I don't really want to look at other people's houses when I want to buy one, its really boring to look at all those 'owned' houses.

So how do I get my own (small) house/block?
Also, is there any storage? As a crafter the storage in this game is PATHETIC

On you tube somebody said that if you have a shop in the house you can just put the stuff you want to store on the market for an outrageous price and store it that way. Thing is my stuff is crafting stuff so it is pointless to put huge prices on all the little goodies, will take me all day.

So if houses are just for show please let me know, I have a house in real life I don't need to spend my time looking at a pixel house just for the fun of it