Housing in FFXIV is one of the most resource-intensive and time-consuming activities in the game, but it’s also the most prestigious activity. Residential areas have limited space for each player's house, but each lot costs millions of Gil to purchase and maintain. This can be a daunting experience for new players as the system isn’t explained well. This article will guide you on how the housing market works and what you can do within your own home.
Housing Amenities
Players with their own room can use it to access their glamour closet, hairstylist, and item stash. You can also use your room to access your Retainers to store more items, sell them on the marketplace, or send them out on Ventures to gain gold and crafting materials.
Larger homes can place NPC vendors inside that can be used to sell valuable items and services like Materia, dyes, gear repair, crafting materials, and food. You can also place a target dummy to practice your skill rotations, gardens to grow food, and a stable for your Chocobos.
Island Sanctuary
You can live your life as a farmer by getting your own Island Sanctuary. You can decorate a small exterior area outside your island home. The only requirement to unlock Island Sanctuaries is to follow a short questline that will be available after completing the Endwalker campaign. This can be a good alternative to regular housing, but it isn’t as extensive as the real deal.
Free Company Housing and Apartments
If all you want is a room of your own, you can always join a Free Company that owns a Free Company house. Each house has a door leading into an instanced space for each member. This way, you can easily own a small apartment for you to decorate and live in. It's also the cheapest option for housing since it only costs 300,000 Gil to purchase.
If you’re playing solo, you can purchase a room from one of the apartments in the many residential wards. It’s slightly more expensive, sitting at 500,000 Gil, to purchase a room, but you don’t need to join a Free Company to have your own space.
Owning a Lot
This is the most difficult way of home ownership but is also the most prestigious in the community. Since lots are limited per ward, many players will be contesting for space. For starters, the price for a small plot of land costs upwards of 3,000,000 Gil, medium plots cost 16,000,000 Gil, and large plots cost 40,000,000 Gil.
Even if you have the highest amount of Gil, you still need to enter a lottery to have a chance to own a home. If you win the lottery, you must confirm the purchase of your land, as there is a time limit set after winning. Failing to claim it on time will return the plot back into the market and will cost you 50% of the Gil you deposited. If you lose the lottery, you can fully refund the Gil you spent, but this must be manually claimed in the placard for the land.
The game will occasionally add new wards to all residential districts for all servers, so if you want to claim your own lot, keep updated on the developer news for any new updates to the housing market.
Building The House
Assembling the house requires the purchase of a Construction Permit item. This can be quickly done by going into the Social tab, Housing, Estate Hall, and selecting a list of houses you wish to purchase. Cottages will cost 450,000 Gil, houses for 1,000,000 Gil, and mansions for 4,000,000 Gil. Once you buy a permit, you just need to wait around 24 hours as your home is being built automatically.
It will be scheduled for demolition if you haven’t stepped inside your home after 30 days. This home is given a 45-day grace period until the house is automatically destroyed and the plot of land returns to the housing market. This timer can be reset just by entering the interior of your home. You will receive an email from Square Enix notifying the scheduled demolition of the house, so make sure to log back in and reset it if you plan to keep the land.
Each home type has an item limit for indoor and outdoor spaces. 200 items indoors and 20 outside are the maximum for cottages, 300 indoors and 30 outside for houses,s and 400 indoors and 40 outside for mansions, so make sure to plan accordingly to the size of your lot.
Best Housing Addons
Only a select few players can receive their own house, but what if there was an addon to experiment with interior decorating so that you can make your dream home? These plugins can help make interior decorating more accessible for all players who own an instanced room.
MakeSpace
MakeSpace is an independent addon for FFXIV that provides a simulation of the game’s furnishing system. This add-on contains all the furniture available in the game’s database and can also handle dyes and other color applications. Players who wish to decorate their home can use this add-on to set up furnishing placements like glamour plates and make rooms into presets once the indoor area is clear.
MakeSpace currently handles all residential districts in FFXIV, like The Mist, Lavender Beds, Goblet, Shirogane, and Empyreum. It can handle Small, Medium, and Large apartment spaces for interior and exterior areas. The addon has over 1600 furniture items available in its database, and prospective interior designers can search by furniture name or select from the furniture category.
The add-on has a community of designers that share and export indoor layouts with different themes, and all of them are available for import to the in-game space.
Burning Down The House
BDTH is a plugin made for easier furniture placement, as the in-game item placement system is challenging to navigate. This plugin allows the clicking and dragging of objects in an indoor space with XYZ axis movement or free mouse placing. It also allows furniture to be placed in mid-air without needing ground support, letting players to create fun jumping puzzles or get creative with their interior design.
Housemate
When checking out another player’s home, the owners usually have to list all the furniture they used to create their home since the game has over 2000 housing-related items. Housemate is a plugin that shows the in-game name of all the furniture and objects that are on-screen. This is a tool for players who want to identify and list all the objects found in another player's home to plan what they should buy. It also displays the dye used in that specific object as a reference for future homeowners.
FFXIV Housing
While it isn’t a plugin, FFXIV is a community-made website that serves as a database for all the furniture in the game. It is a tool for finding a specific item based on its type, theme, recipe level, and vendor location. If you want to decorate your home with a specific style, FFXIV Housing has filters for every in-game aesthetic.
