Getting a house is terrible.

[ShyTheBard]

Spending 4 hours mashing a button and taking a small break of 5 minutes(yes this happened to me.) only to lose is extremely disheartening, please make it much less painful or long to do this.

[ShyTheBard]

I know this is played out to say but after doing this a few times it's extremely heart breaking and my hands hurt every-time.

[Divinemights]

Without this timer system you wouldn’t even see an open plot at all for you to click.

[Jojoya]

The problem isn't the timer. Without that timer, that plot would have been sold before you were even aware it had been available.

The problem is the lack of supply, which is even worse right now with demolition suspended. Until that is addressed, it will be difficult for anyone who wants a house.

If you want the house just for you, buy an apartment if you haven't already done so. You still have limited access to gardening via the flower pots (only limitation is you can't intercross seeds). An apartment will hold you over until Ishgard housing is opened and you'll have a much better chance to get a house.

If it's for your FC and your members want the house sooner not later, make certain the trusted members of the FC are taking turns at the placard so no one person is giving up all their time.

[Burmecia]

Is this the sound of broken record yet?: The time for house buying is super bad right now, because of auto-demo just not happening. It sucks, yeah, but I hate to see people getting burned and getting pissed at the game and SE and their fellow players because of the system is not working as normal. Now is just not the best time.
- And even when it is working normally I agree there is flaws!

[JamieRose]

Why is auto-demo not working? Why announce a feature to free up housing and then not implement it?

[Mhaeric]

Why is auto-demo not working? Why announce a feature to free up housing and then not implement it?

They put auto-demolition on hold during various events that are happening irl. The first time was right after the tsunami in Japan I think. Right now it's because of the covid-19 pandemic.

[Vidu]

Why is auto-demo not working? Why announce a feature to free up housing and then not implement it?

As Mhaeric said: They will turn off the auto-demolition if large areas of the world are being hit by catastrophes that are mostly going to prevent a lot of people from logging in and/or paying their sub for a while. Most of the time those are natural disasters, like tsunamis in japan or hurricanes hitting parts of the US and usually only servers that belong to that part of the world get their auto-demolition suspended (as in: if there are floods in japan, they might turn off auto-demo for the japanese DCs, but not for NA and EU). The obvious idea behind this is that they dont want people to worry about their virtual house on top of having to worry about their real life home first - its a nice gesture to ease the suffering for people struck by such a disaster at least a little bit.

They deemed the current pandemic to be such a natural disaster that warranted to halt the demolition for the time being - with people losing their jobs (and with that the means to pay for the sub) and increasing the likelyhood that a lot of people will get sick, maybe even taken to the hospital.

Auto-demolition is working - but they're trying their best to make sure that its working as intended, as in: "Taking" away houses from people who are not using them because they're not intrested in the house or game anymore. Not taking them from people who cant play for a while because nature happend.
And yes, its an imperfect system - not the least because they cant account for all the "small" personal disasters that might happen like accidents, illnesses or losing a job in general. But this is the best they can do.

[Awha]

4 hours is not so bad, sadly when it comes plot wars breaks can cost ya.

[JamieRose]

They put auto-demolition on hold during various events that are happening irl. The first time was right after the tsunami in Japan I think. Right now it's because of the covid-19 pandemic.

Oh you mean that virus that stopped being dangerous because cops?

I don't really buy that excuse at this point. Turn auto-demo on.