Legit curious...why are housing wards ghost towns?

[Mew_FC]

Imo, the main reason is because housing should've remain a "FC only" feature.
In term of probability, big FC = more chances to have at least one FC members in the neighborhood at any moment.
But SE decided to open housing to individual players. And because of that, yards remain empty most of the time, unless the owner is connected AND teleport to his/her plot AND don't lock him/herself inside his/her house.
And to make things worse, SE answered the housing crisis by adding more districts, so players get more dispatched between more instances.

I wish there was at least one instance where houses would be for FC only.

I would have to agree. Keeping the 5 original wards across what are now 4 housing districts would have been plenty if they would have kept it FC only. But we can't have nice things....

[RoseyDevlin]

I teleport to my house atleast 5 times a day, even more cause whenever I need to use summoning bell, crafting, mb or fixing my gears. Mostly 2 hours after reset time I do see couple people near housing district near my house so i guess neighbours. I don't really move too far away from my plot so I can't say for sure but I do see some people afk or using mb/bells. Their surely somewhat populated but just quiet and people doing their own thing, would be cool to have somekind of mini game/ event outside in housing district to make it more active.

[Losara]

I teleport to my house atleast 5 times a day, even more cause whenever I need to use summoning bell, crafting, mb or fixing my gears. Mostly 2 hours after reset time I do see couple people near housing district near my house so i guess neighbours. I don't really move too far away from my plot so I can't say for sure but I do see some people afk or using mb/bells. Their surely somewhat populated but just quiet and people doing their own thing, would be cool to have somekind of mini game/ event outside in housing district to make it more active.

Essentially the reason why housing wards are empty is due to lack of reason to be there apart from decorating the houses and marketboard / retainer. If they were to add in events etc in these wards it could potentially cause server issues hence they would likely need to create instanced housing before this can happen.

Its the same as how there are currently instanced zones for the ShB content, there are a ton of housing wards constantly running at the moment some with no one doing anything in them putting strain on the servers for almost no benefit. I hope they can address these issues in the eventual Ishgard housing patch somehow.