Quote Originally Posted by Jojoya View Post
The "black market" exists because the supply doesn't meet the demand. An in-game system isn't going to change anything when players would still be able to dictate what price they're going to sell at regardless of any regulated system.

The scarcity doesn't even exist outside of the NA data centers. There are a few EU worlds with available housing. Almost every JP world has an abundance of housing to choose from. If SE was truly trying to try players to the game through house ownership, wouldn't that scarcity exists on all worlds instead of just worlds in a certain region?
As I've already described, an in-game system would make it easy to identify house flippers.

That's an interesting observation about JP housing. However, is that hearsay, or are there stats? As for why, it could be something like a smaller proportion of JP to EU and NA players, or a cultural JP difference. Or maybe SE is concerned about self-image in JP and is afraid of being perceived of exploiting JP players?

I come from lotro, where they developed a system where they could spawn extra wards to accommodate the player base. So that's a 2004 MMO that, in 2012, modified their housing system in that manner. Frankly, I am quite skeptical of SE devs not having a similar solution, which leads me (as said) to conclude that SE Sales pushed for it.