Apartments need Rent

[Almagnus1]

You're opening statement was that you were thinking of a way to make apartments a "more attractive option compared to housing" and while making them cheaper and accessible earlier is a small start, how does adding a rent do that?

If everything (but the FC rooms) have rent attached to them, and the rent is easily doable, the apartments would become cheaper and easier to move into, and since there's rent on everything, it gives players an opportunity to do housing stuff without necessarily being in a house. That said, the apartments should definitely have more features to them (and not basically be another instance of an FC room) so there's actual incentive to do so beyond a cheaper price.

Is it just a counter-balance to your proposed price and earlier access?

Partially, but 10k gil/week is peanuts, especially if anyone can pay for the apartment by walking up to the NPC that sells them and extending your rent.

Are those two points really going to make apartments more attractive compared to houses, which allow for more furnishing items, outdoor furnishing, cross-breeding gardening, have multiple floors (that allow for easier glitching when decorating without the aid of a third-party tool), and can be bought by FCs?

With the anticipation that we're seeing gardening moving away from housing (or having a system that's superior to it with Endwalkers), hopefully the gardening stuff changes enough that it's not as heavily associated with housing as is. I would also be OK with SE increasing the size and capabilities of the apartments as they should be more distinct from FC rooms.

And where do FC private chambers fit into this?

FC private chambers would be attached to the FC house, so they should remain unchanged. The FC house, on the other hand, should get rent and at a higher rate than a personal house because FCs need a minimum of four characters to found, so they should have the resources of at least four people to help fund them.