Hey, I've been trying to get a house for my FC too (and I do remember you Fiona ), anyways, there's nothing wrong about the timer, I saw a house being sold about 3 hours ago. My guess is things got absolutely terrible by the time SE suspended the demolition timer (I understand why tho, but still, it made the situation far worse than it was), as some months ago I saw multiple plots being freed everyday on Ragnarok, and many of my friends got their houses without having to compete with anyone.
I believe we should be patient until the demolition timer is introduced again, and waiting for servers to be deserted between two patches.