There should be a way for players to TRADE Housing Plots with one another

[Arzalis]

Actually IMO the biggest issue their housing system ran into was never adjusting the prices of buying a plot in relation to the inflation of the economy. Getting the gil for a small plot when one is available is just about trivial now with medium and large just requiring a small amount of effort if you're not sitting on a gil horde already due to the game's lack of gil sinks taking it out of circulation. Housing shortage wasn't really a thing back in 2.0 when they started allowing players to buy private homes.

Depends on the server, but it's always been a thing on the bigger ones. It's just that people on smaller servers tended to not care until it affected them too. The problem is limited availability. The devs can't add new ones fast enough to keep up with a growing game, so the shortage was always an inevitability. It's just been exacerbated by the sudden spike in players.

Making it cost more won't change much at this point.