YoshyP response to Blizzard Housing..

[Qyoon]

When housing was first discussed, this is how Yoshida claimed it was going to work. We were also supposed to be able to grow our house, add towers and add features via GC seals and ranks, FC and personal homes were supposed to be in their own wards, etc. None of the features they told us about made it into the final product. Which is why he never talks about upcoming features anymore, so many things were never put into a lot of things in the beginning. I used to have a list of everything we told us we were getting but didnt, I have no idea wheere that list is anymore tho

They just decided to use houses as a feature to keep people subsribed to the game.
Cheaper and more efficient than developping a whole gameplay loop around housing.