You can start gardening, dress the house like a carbuncle, add crazy furniture, or make a gothic hall. Getting the house can be difficult. There are lots of factors to keep in mind, not least of all the amount of Gil you will need. But we’re here to help with some handy tips and tricks for getting your dream property.
1. Understand Your Plots
Buying a house is not as simple as finding a plot you like and placing a down payment. There are many things you need to consider. First, make that list. You want a house with a Moogle wall, a ready to go garden, positioned near the market board, with an ocean view. Got it? Now tear it up. While you might manage the last two points with a bit of luck (and a lot of patience), houses in FFXIV come as a plot of land. Even f there was a house there less then a day before you purchased it, it has been bulldozed. So if you want that Moogle wall you’re going to have to get one yourself. The second thing you need to understand is the plot sizes. You can buy a small house (cottage), a medium house (a house house), or a large house (look at the size of that mansion!) The bigger the house, the harder they are to get hold of. And you cannot buy a large house plot of land and build a smaller house on it. Sorry gardeners, that’s the rules.
2. Unlock All Housing Areas
You may have your heart set on a house in Shirogane, I know I did…
However, the main house mechanic in FFXIV is the fact that there’s always a battle to get land.
Apart from Shirogane, unlocking the housing estates are low level quests. (Shirogane is a housing estate released with Stormblood).
Listed below is the name of each relevant housing quest, where you can pick it up, and what it unlocks.
The Mist in Limsa Lominsa: Quest, Where the Heart Is (The Mist). Lower La Noscea (x31, y20). Level 5.
Lavender Beds in Gridania: Quest, where the Heart Is (Lavender Beds). Central Shroud (x21, y21). Level 5.
The Goblet in Ul’ dah: Quest, Where the Heart Is (The Goblet). Western Thanalan (x26, y24). Level 5.
Shirogane in Kugane: Quest, I Dream of Shirogane. Found in Kugane (X:12.0, Y:9.9). Level 61.
3. Check the Boards
Make a routine out of checking the boards to see what’s available where. To access the boards, go to an aetheryte in one of the big city states with housing (Limsa, Uldah, Gridania, Kugane). Go into the tab Residential district, then the section “Go To Specified Ward” (Review Tabs). From here you can look at 24 pages of houses, 60 houses on every page, and see what plots are available. As you do this, you’ll come to realize pricing of the bigger properties is not the problem. It’s the availability. I went through all of the tabs for every housing estate today, and (as of this writing) I found a grand total of 5 small plots, 0 medium plots, and 0 large plots.
4. Ask Your Friends for Backup
It can take a long time to trail through all those boards. Ask you friends to trail through them with you, or maybe setup a chat channel for this. Not only will you go through the boards quicker, but your friends can then be keeping their eyes open for a plot. One player in my FC always alerts the chat if a plot near her becomes available. This is how one area of the Mist came to be taken over by Sloppy Griffins.
5. Join A Free Company
If none of your real-world friends have been converted over to the life changing entertainment that is Final Fantasy XIV, then be sure to join a Free Company (FC). A Free Company is a guild. They come with ready-made friends and, often times, a bank. This means that: Every FC has its own rules on this, but it’s worth enquiring about if you keep spending your Gil on glamour.
6. Have Enough Gil
Buying a house in-game is not cheap. Checking the boards today, the cheapest one I’ve seen is 3,107,500 for a small house in The Goblet. A Medium house can cost up to 20,000,000 Gil. A Mansion can cost up to 50,000,000 Gil. So yeah, save your gil.
7. Have Extra Gil
After buying your land, you have 45 days to build your house. If you don’t, the land returns to the housing Gods and someone else will be able to buy it. Building the house itself requires extra Gil, so keep this in mind. But this is a small price to pay after the Gil you’ve paid out for the plot of land. Ideally you’d want about an extra 450,000 to 3,000,000 to build the house itself (price depends on plot size purchased).
8. Price Reduction Camping
When a house goes on the market, it starts at a set price. Then it slowly reduces in price until it’s sold. This is good if you don’t quite have enough to buy the plot yet, because you can wait until it’s that little bit cheaper – then brag to all your friends about the price of your property. However, the cheaper a property becomes the more likely it is to sell. In order to buy a property, you have to physically go to a plot. If you’re determined to wait until the price is lower, but do not want someone to buy it out from under you, camp at the plot. Get your friends to help. This involves a lot of asking people politely to not buy the property. You can use the dirty trick of initiating trade to stop them from accessing the board, but this will not work if they have “do not disturb” turned on. And in the end, you may have to bite the bullet and buy at a higher price to prevent someone from buying it out from under you.
9. Turn on Do Not Disturb
Let me tell you a story of a girl who really wanted that small plot in Shirogane. Shirogane had not been open long at this point, but news of its coming had led to her saving as much Gil as possible. The day came. She stood outside the plot that was to be her first in-game house. She began the process. Someone initiated a trade. NOOOOOO. Chaos ensued as she tried to get out of the trade system as quickly as possible. She was too late. The friend of the evil Lalafell who began the trade to distract her, had bought the plot out from under her. What did these two blaggards have to say for themselves? LOL. Sorry, mate. The moral of the story? Turn on your “Do Not Disturb” when buying a house. To put yourself in Do Not Disturb Mode, type /busy into the chat bar. This prevents all party invites, tells, and trades from getting through. Just remember to turn it off again when you’re finished (to turn it off you type /busy into the chat bar again). And if all else fails, you can always buy yourself an apartment from the apartment building for 500,000 Gil, or a room at your FC house for 300,000 gil.
