Housing is still a big problem in Final Fantasy 14. Just like in real life, there are too many people looking for a home and not enough homes to go around. At first, Square Enix thought to simply let the market try to solve the problem on its own, but this resulted in houses selling for ludicrous sums of gil. A housing lottery system also failed to alleviate the problem, first because some lotteries ended without a winner, but second because a lottery still didn't create more houses than there were players looking to buy a house.
One of the solutions that Square Enix tried a while ago was automatic demolition. This use-it-or-lose-it system essentially gave away land plots from inactive players. Houses would be demolished, and then a 24-hour timer would warn prospective home buyers that a new plot was about to go up for sale.
The system still sucked as it did nothing to stop massive bidding wars from breaking out, but it did put a few more houses on the market. The system was suspended throughout the pandemic and was supposed to go back into action in early 2022, but then the Ukraine war happened, and Square Enix wisely chose not to remove the digital houses of Ukrainians that may have had to flee their real-life homes.
But as Ukrainians returned and the pandemic waned, FF14's housing problem simply grew worse. Thus, Square Enix has announced the return of automatic demolitions of inactive houses starting in January 2023.
"The automatic demolition of estates was suspended in December 2021," wrote Square Enix, "however, after careful consideration, we have decided to resume auto-demolition with the release of Patch 6.3."
The automatic demo timer will pick up where it left off back in December 2021 for those who haven't entered their homes in a year. Everyone who's entered their home at least once since then will have 45 days before their house is yanked from under them. A timer will be displayed on the Estate tab of the Timers window to remind players to access their homes in order to avoid demolition.
Fans seem mixed on the news. While some will still log in once a month to retain their beautiful homes, others welcome automatic demolition as players get 80 percent of their gil refunded--something that doesn't happen if they just relinquish their home manually.