And throughout ARR, entire wards were mostly vacant plots. Which kind of defeats the whole point of having a housing system to begin with. Furthermore, it wouldn't do much to deter anyone. Gil has virtually no value anymore due to the massive inflation. So the exorbitant prices wouldn't matter to many players. Not to mention how much worse botting has got. All in all, you're just rewarding the extremely rich players or those willing to RMT.