I lost my house years ago. It was during the initial purge, if I recall. I was away on business and received an email that I had 5 days left. I got home with 1 day to spare. House was already gone. I posted here or reddit or something screen shots of the email with the auto-demo time while standing at lost plot (now owned by someone else since it was FCFS back then) along with a screenshot of my local PC time which clearly showed it was before the scheduled auto-demo time.

At the time I was upset, but I realized that I wasn't playing the game, so my house should go to another player.

The current auto-demo notice we get explicitly states that auto-demo cannot happen before the stated time. I don't know if the 2015(?) version of that email stated that or not.

I didn't learn my lesson necessarily. I did manage to get another house afterwards (FCFS, no lockout). When I'm somewhat dormant from the game, I do login every 44th day to reopen the house. And I haven't had the problem since. I probably shouldn't wait until the 44th day of course. Given that housing is only via lottery, that's not a gamble I want to take anymore. So, like much of the server population, I'll hold onto my house now even if I'm not playing the game as much.