What in game advantages does owning a residence provide?

[EmmetOtter]

And by residence I mean either owning your own house or buying a room in your fc's house.

Is it strictly a epeen thing where you dress up a plot with decorations and sink gold into? Or is there a real benefit, like more storage space, xp buff, food buffs last longer, or something?

[Dustytome]

FC houses have access to the workshop where various housing skins, buff chargers and ship parts can be assembled. The workshop can also send airships & submersibles out on missions (essentially fancy expensive retainers, but for the fc instead of individual players). Indoor flower pots can grown seeds, outdoor garden plots and grow & crossbreed seeds. The last advantage is the ability to charge buffs. While lvl 1 & 2 buffs can be straight up purchased from the action vendors, the grade 3 buffs have to be crafted and charged, which can only be done within an fc house.

Personal houses have the same ability to grow indoors/outdoors and crossbreed outdoors as the fc houses, but lack the workshop.

Apartments/FC Rooms only have the ability to grow seeds. No crossbreeding. Apartments have an advantage over fc rooms in that there's no fc/house attachment so there's no worry about losing it if you want to switch fcs or something happens to the fc house.

Beyond that, they're just there for decorative purposes.

[Infindox]

Having access to an fc house allows for the workshop, with you can use for airship/sub missions. You can also make higher then rank 2 fc buffs. Not everyone is like our fc but since we are a friend group pretty much everyone can use the garden.

For personals.... Garden? Really owning a personal isn't really needed, I just enjoy having a space where we all hang out at.

[ScottDoom]

Something else not mentioned is that you can stable and train your chocobo. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's required to go from a rank 10 chocobo to a rank 20.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Something else not mentioned is that you can stable and train your chocobo. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's required to go from a rank 10 chocobo to a rank 20.

The stable is not required to level to 20. It is merely a way to get xp without having your chocobo with fight you. One an hour both you and one other person can feed your stabled chocobo giving an amount of XP based on the cleanliness of the stable. What is required to get your Chocobo beyond level 10 is a Thavnairian Onion for each level after 10. If I recall correctly, quests can provide 2 of these onions. The other 8 will either need to be purchased from the Market or grown in your own flower pots. The seeds to grow Thavnairian Onions can only be acquired through crossbreeding which required access to a House's outdoor garden. So if you don't own a House or have access to a garden in someone else's house, your only option to obtain those seeds to is to buy them from the market... and in that case you might as well just buy the fully grown onion instead imo.

[Jojoya]

For individuals, it's primarily access to crossbreeding for seeds that yield items that can only be obtained through gardening (other than the rare occasions those items show up in the quick venture loot tables). The garden minions (Allagan Melon, Mandragora Gang), things like Royal Fern and Blood Pepper for crafted minions, Jute and Broombush for housing items, and various other materials are gardening exclusives. Thavnairian Onions are primarily from gardening (players can get 2 from different HW quests). The player can always buy seeds on the marketboard from those that produced them through gardening.

For FC, it's access to the workshop in addition to gardening. Airships and submersibles have exclusive items on their loot table that can be sold to raise gil for FC needs so they aren't dependent on member donations.

Depending on what a player's personal goals are, those things might be seen as game play advantages. Someone focused solely on combat and power progression wouldn't but those into other parts of the game might.

Something else not mentioned is that you can stable and train your chocobo. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's required to go from a rank 10 chocobo to a rank 20.

Don't need access to a stable to do that. The Thavnairian Onions can also be fed to the chocobo while they are summoned in the zones.

A stable can make it faster for your chocobo to gain ranks since it can be trained by you and by others with access to the same stable when you don't have it summoned. Purchasing an apartment includes access to the building's stable so a house isn't strictly necessary.

[ZattanaWen]

The only thing you can do with a personal house that you can't do with an apartment/FC room is gardening and displaying retainers; both are outdoor things. (Indoors, there is nothing a personal house can do that an apartment/FC room can't except hold more stuff.)

Apartment buildings have a chocobo stable outside them, as should your FC house unless it's completely dysfunctional.

Indoors, there's little more you can do that you couldn't do at an Inn. You can place crafting stations which give you an absolutely inconsequential bonus. You can access your FC's company chest if you have that housing item. Other stuff (summoning bell, crystal bell, orchestrion, armoire, unending journey) are all available at Inns.

And as has been said, FC houses have a few more things people can do (workshop, airship/sub, wheels, etc.) but those permissions are typically limited to just a handful of people running the FC. Most FCs also will limit who can access the gardens. They'll typically let anyone tend/fertilize, but not harvest. And most FCs will give everyone free reign of the chocobo stables.

Stables are not required to level your chocobo (though they're useful if others in the FC train yours while you aren't using it), but they are required if you want to change its color.

[MsMisato]

And by residence I mean either owning your own house or buying a room in your fc's house.

Is it strictly a epeen thing where you dress up a plot with decorations and sink gold into? Or is there a real benefit, like more storage space, xp buff, food buffs last longer, or something?

lets use the workshop if you are a FC, but if you are individual owner, cross breeding plants which is there which is available only with housing and thats a big thing there.

other than its decorating mostly. a lot of time people get homes, play with for a couple of months and then leave them to rot pretty much

[Eriane_Elis]

It's an enjoyable thing to do. I don't like many things in the game but housing is one of the things I like. I'm always on top of the "hardcore" content in the game but FF14 just isn't my game. I play because my friends play and housing is a great place to socialize etc... So in those regards, it passes the time for me. When I redecorated the FC i'm part of 2 years ago, it was a big undertaking that took 1-2 weeks and 120mil gil~ish. It is a big gil sink but people before didn't care to go to the FC mansion but after everyone was going there regularly. It became a hangout hub and a to-go place for food bonuses before dungeons etc... New recruits loved it too and stayed, got an FC apartment and apartments often became an extension to the mansion as different "rooms".

There are perks beyond the "epeen" as what you would say. To some of us, it's just as important if not more important than end-game battle content.