Share your housing stories about the state of housing right now

[Liamont]

Maybe SE will listen if they hear our stories on just how hard it is to get a house right now.

So what's your story? How long have you been looking for a house, what are the lengths you have gone to to try and get one? Have you managed to get one? Still struggling through placard hell? Won Housing Savage?

Let's let SE hear what we've been going through.

[Liamont]

I'll start:
I managed to get a small private, back when houses would still deprecate. Got one at the lowest price, and there were still a ton sitting around.

Left it though when I moved servers, and I got lucky to grab a private on Mateus when things weren't so bad as they are now. Full price, but that's not so bad when it was one of the few houses left.

But then to get a house for my FC? I clicked on placards for days until finally after a 14 hour session of clicking on a placard every 30 seconds or so I landed our small FC house. And I'm one of the lucky ones. My friends have clicked placards for weeks and not gotten a house, until they got so demoralized they just gave up.

Now though? We've dreamed of having a medium or large, and I've saved up gil since 2018 in the hopes for an Ishgard house when that finally would come. Back when Ishgard housing wasn't announced, I swept the wards on the hour to see if any medium or large would demo, to try and get one for our FC to use. No such luck for me on Mateus, someone else always got to it before I could. Then after the relocation timer change, I camped at mediums and larges for hours, only for other lucky folks to get them.

I know I'm lucky though to have at least a small for my FC, but it really blows when you have enough money to be able to buy a large but literally cannot get one because there's hardly any that pop. And not enough for everyone who wants one.

And even with the lottery changes, sure I'm glad I don't need to camp at a placard anymore. But statistically, with all those big FCs with tons of gil and hundreds of members who can help them put lottery tickets in, my little FC with my small group of friends probably doesn't stand a chance in the seven hells. We saved for four years for an Ishgard medium or large, and now it's looking like we probably won't be able to get one unless we're very lucky.

Gotta admit it's pretty demoralizing. I really wish we could just have instanced housing so everyone has a fair chance to get any size house they want. Why is this aspect of the game locked out from pretty much anyone but those who were lucky, were in the right place or right time, or those who have a massive amount of money and can buy a house from other players?

[Shibi]

So what's your story? How long have you been looking for a house, what are the lengths you have gone to to try and get one?

As I am on Materia I would love a house, and have been hoping for one since it opened. I have money saved up from mining diadem for days at a time and also from selling materia X from Adventurer in need levelling dungeons.

Sadly, it's impossible to get housing, as none of the housing on Materia is open yet, and won't be for 2 more months at least.

On my old server, on Aether, I got my house fairly easily a few days before the last 4 wards were added. Clicking smart in primetime between 12 hours and 14 hours against 5 bots on about 6 properties. It wasn't a great house, neighbor had those horrible pink glowing bushes up. But I was able to relocate it to a nicer one on the day the 4 wards opened, and was very happy.

Sadly, no chance on Materia, something I hope that SE revisit by opening the old cities to us now, rather than lumping them in with Emperyum when that opens.

[Burmecia]

For the reference, I have owned houses on following servers + the most valuable plot: Leviathan/M, Lich/S, Zodiark/S, Omega/M, Louisoix/L, Ragnarok/S.

Shortly my detailed history with houses: medium at Leviathan was my first house which we turned into FC house with my friends and which we then sold for gil when we moved from NA dc to EU dc at beginning of Stormblood.
4.X first months were busy and weird time. Part of our friend group, which migrated from NA dc with us got stuck on Omega while most made it to Louisoix.
We had to begin from scratch at EU dc, where our first FC house was small at shirogane, then med at mist, finally large at mist. We were happily able to move the old med fc house to our fc member as private house when we made move from med to large.
Our friend group's FC's holdings at Omega are sort of remnants from that early Stormblood time, and since people use our FC's Omega branch's spaces we have no plans to relinquish them.
My Lich, Zodiark and Ragnarok smalls were bought for my raiding alts on respective servers, since I started raiding on EU dc in 3.5. I prefer to my active alts to have houses if possible.
Spring 2021 I made RP alt on Zodiark and begun maintaining our smallest branch FC, with small house, on Zodiark which had seen very little use since Chaos/Light split. For rp and gardening I bought priva for that characters well, relocated to nicer plot when such came across.

Like any aspiring house owner, of course the lack of open space is frustrating when I find myself wanting plot. But personally I have refused it to get to me and make me angry. As I see it, it is not anyone's fault and I can be very patient.

I haven't chosen any of those servers by their housing situation, I just wanna be where my friends and statics are, the usual stuff. I have always seen any server's housing situation (relatively lot of free spac/no free space) as SE's way to encourage people to not mob on few big servers. I think that is valid strategy.

[LaylaTsarra]

Never had trouble getting a house with new ward releases. I have an alt now on Sophia where I'd like a small fc to share with a number of my friends who transferred or created characters there as well. Have my doubts about getting one now with lotto but that's not set in stone yet.

[Kyohei]

When they added wards in all housing area during ShB, i missed to get my prefered spot, a medium house in Shirogane by one click. Someone else got it less than one second before me. Fast forward and resigned myself to look for a small plot anywhere in hope of relocating one day. From time to time i'd go to see that house i failed to get, only to see it unused, unfurnished, after 2 years it was the same state as when the person bought it. This kind of thing sorta leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth, but i had some hope the auto-demolition would play at some point...well it never did.
So i do have a house, a small one though, which is restricting on many aspects. First one being of course the size and furniture capacity, but more annoying is the restriction on garden beds, pots to grow plants, numbers of npcs allowed to use in house.
It's one thing to restrict the overall number of furniture one can use depending on the house tier, but restricting some kind of furniture makes no sense and gives a feeling of unfairness. I'm of the mind that anything relating to gardening should be allowed the same way regardless of the house tier. Let the players decide fully how they want to use their precious house space without restricting on any objects.

[Nepentha]

Getting housing wasn't difficult, as I purchased my personal and FC house on Brynhildr during a time that the server was relatively small and housing wasn't an issue. But since then I've watched the playerbase grow and the number of houses remain the same finite number.

I realize the devs have a lot of irons in the fire with FFXIV and that the pandemic and chip shortage did not help matters either, but I've watched the housing community burn for years now while being almost entirely neglected. (This may not be the case on the back end. And if so, I apologize for the insinuation. But please consider what we, the players, are and are not seeing happening.)

Obviously it's a part of the game players want to take part in and with the player count continuing to rise, this clamoring for housing will only increase. Many other MMOs have successfully implemented housing without it being a finite resource, it's high time the devs carve out a little time to dedicate to the people who enjoy this aspect of the game, too. Please.

Please.