Getting Housing is a Problem

[DrWho2010]

All houses were gone by the time we got up in the morning. The patch times make it easier for certain time zones to get houses. We work so we're not staying up all night or waking up at 5 am to get a house.

One thing - you are going to have to get over this if you ever want something that is in high demand like housing. You are definitely shooting yourself in the foot if you are not willing to work with how the servers come online.

[Catstab]

One thing - you are going to have to get over this if you ever want something that is in high demand like housing. You are definitely shooting yourself in the foot if you are not willing to work with how the servers come online.

This is beyond true. The 'no timer' houses lasted 30-60 minutes on most servers. So if "when you got up in the morning" was not 6am eastern when the servers came online, you were not motivated enough to skip the timer. There were houses open for the entirety of the day, but they were houses that needed to be camped. By 8pm eastern, only half of the houses with timers were gone. To have "All houses gone" by the time you got on means you didn't log on at all on 10/13.

[alpacaurbags]

This is beyond true. The 'no timer' houses lasted 30-60 minutes on most servers. So if "when you got up in the morning" was not 6am eastern when the servers came online, you were not motivated enough to skip the timer. There were houses open for the entirety of the day, but they were houses that needed to be camped. By 8pm eastern, only half of the houses with timers were gone. To have "All houses gone" by the time you got on means you didn't log on at all on 10/13.

We did not expect the demand to be as bad as it was. We got on at 8 and all housing was gone, don't know what to tell you. We checked, assume what you want about the situation.

[Greyhawk]

We did not expect the demand to be as bad as it was. We got on at 8 and all housing was gone, don't know what to tell you. We checked, assume what you want about the situation.

How could you not? Housing has been the hottest topic around for years - one of the biggest gripes of not enough housing. You literally have to have the game patched, ready to hit 'Play' the moment it comes up and get in queue to be able to even have a chance at getting a house right now (if servers are brought down for patch/maintenance/etc.). You'd probably have to be logged out where you want to buy in order to get it - that was the only way I finally got mine. I hit 'Purchase Land' just as the steamrolling stampede of Shirogane was rolling to my house. I've also literally camped a house for over 12 hours for my wife (we took shifts), just to get her a small house. Housing is like Black Friday for the first time, every day.

[Catstab]

We got on at 8 and all housing was gone

That's totally impossible.

Timers last a minimum of 8 hours on relocated houses. Many of the new 720 houses were relocated to. That means that the houses those players relocated from were open and on timers until at least 4 pm eastern time, 8 hours after the server came up, in the original wards 1-21.

[Shibi]

Sadly, it is how it is, and it won't change in the near future. So like grinding raid progression you need to get in there and just do it.

We did not expect the demand to be as bad as it was.

For weeks and weeks anyone who was placard clicking had known demand would be huge.

We got on at 8 and all housing was gone

The housing discords had spreadsheets that tracked the vacant properties, and those show you were wrong. And this is the thing... Most housing becomes available around 12.5 hours from the point it's vacant, 10 to 14 hours being the prime window. This means you could have come on - with your FC members - at 6pm your time and likely taken a property.

Best advice I can give is; join the housing sweep discord plus rope in your FC members to look three or four times each day, turn up to a placard around the 12 hour mark with as many FC people as you can and get to clicking for 30 to 45 minutes. The more FC members you can get clicking the greater your chance.

[Catstab]

The housing discords had spreadsheets that tracked the vacant properties, and those show you were wrong. And this is the thing... Most housing becomes available around 12.5 hours from the point it's vacant, 10 to 14 hours being the prime window. This means you could have come on - with your FC members - at 6pm your time and likely taken a property.

Best advice I can give is; join the housing sweep discord plus rope in your FC members to look three or four times each day, turn up to a placard around the 12 hour mark with as many FC people as you can and get to clicking for 30 to 45 minutes. The more FC members you can get clicking the greater your chance.

With respect, OP did amend her statement when pressed to 'all houses with no timers were gone by the time I woke up' as she was not interested in placard clicking. So while you are correct, this is covered in previous pages of the thread. Appreciate you lending some advice, too. I also supplied my reddit thread with new ward tips and general camping tips. Hopefully something helps her out!

[alpacaurbags]

One thing - you are going to have to get over this if you ever want something that is in high demand like housing. You are definitely shooting yourself in the foot if you are not willing to work with how the servers come online.

Despite whether we got on then or not, I heard from others that most housing was gone or on a timer anyway and the queue was in the 1000s, so despite what both you and Catstab below say, there was indeed no housing the rest of the day. We checked at 8 am.

[Frizze]

Despite whether we got on then or not, I heard from others that most housing was gone or on a timer anyway and the queue was in the 1000s, so despite what both you and Catstab below say, there was indeed no housing the rest of the day. We checked at 8 am.

Even the lowest population servers saw the most desirable plots scooped up in the first few minutes. The full lot of 500+ smalls took anywhere from 30 mins to several hours to go through on the north american servers(the smaller japanese and euro servers actually still have some houses open even now). But as Catstab points out, its statistically impossible that all 720 new houses on your server were taken by first time buyers. Many were relocated into from less desirable plots in wards 1-21(and some of those plots were relocated into from even less desirable plots). Those timers expiring throughout the rest of the day is what these people refer to when they say housing was available the rest of the day.

But repeating what others have said isnt why i started typing this response. I did so to dispel a misconception. A queue in the 1000s to log on means that the login server was congested. Those players were being distributed to all the various servers. Had you been sitting 2000th in line and taken 20 mins to log in, you still would have found a few hundred houses to choose from. Not the best plots, but plenty of options.