What would you do to improve/'fix' housing?

[Cinno]

It doesnt even need to be instanced... theres things they could do right now that would solve most of the problems.

Stage 1: Destroy the 'house flipping' market.
1) One personal house allowed per account. The house is listed as owned by the character that purchased it, but all characters on the account will have ownership and permissions as if they the owner. This will prevent players from purchasing houses on alts and stockpiling the plots to sell. Single person FC's will still be an issue however. At first login after this change, players with multiple houses will be required to pick one characters house to save, all the rest will be demolished with all furniture/decor returned to the player (even things that would normally be destroyed, as this is a special circumstance)
2) Have a 'cooldown' period on the plot. Once a house has been demolished, that plot cannot be purchased by anyone for a set amount of time. Maybe 15 days, or 30. Enough time to where people would not want to risk buying the house from a flipper in the first place, as they wouldnt be able to immediately buy it. Also, dont display the timer of the cooldown. That way random people walking the neighborhood will not know when the plot will be free, just that it will eventually be free.

These two steps alone will stop the house flipping market, or at least do damage to it. With that out of the way, we can move on to the next stage.

Stage 2: Make apartments more Desirable.

Apartments as they are, are not an adequate alternative to houses. They are the size of a FC room with basic features. If they want individual players to gravitate to the apartments, they need to make them more desireable.

1) Offer different sized layouts, for different prices. You can a have a Studio, the standard fc sized room to start with. Next size up would be a Classic, the size of a medium house (instead of stairs leading to the basement, just have a second adjecent room thats the same size as the medium house basement.) And the third option would be the Townhome, the layout of the medium apartment but with stairs leading to a large second floor.
2) Add features that houses have, although limited. For starters, each apartment would have a decent sized patio. That patio could house exterior decorations and furnishings, and could even have a spot for a small gardening plot (so that people could garden and cross breed). The bigger the apartment layout, the bigger the patio. You could even have a view of the Ward from on the patio (A static view that doesnt show any player characters or anything. just a background.)

With players being unable to purchase multiple plots per account, and apartments being made a little more desirable for the individual would-be home owner, we can move on to the final stage.

Stage 3: increase the availability of houses and wards as demand increases.
This has been suggested in this thread already a lot, and thats because its a solid solution. With the first two stages hopefully freeing up some plots, the demand will still be a little more than the servers can handle, but it shouldnt be as chaotic. That being said, they should have a check happen a week before every patch. That check will scan the wards and determine if any of them are at or above 95% capacity. If they are, a single new ward will be generated during the patch. This will be a slow process, but it will guarantee that the housing demand will eventually be met, without having the server costs and stress of adding ten wards all at once.

I believe that with all of these things in place, the housing crisis will eventually settle down, and people will be able to have houses as needed.

One last tidbit though, I do believe that the demolition timer should stay, however It needs to be based on sub time and not stepping on the property. As long as you have an active sub, your plot will be safe. If you cancel your sub, the 45 day timer can start and after that 45 days if you havent re subbed to the game, your house will be lost.

Thats my three step system to fixing housing. Wasn't so hard honestly. This could be done. SOMETHING needs to be done.