Based upon what people have been saying in these forums, this game lacks a mechanism for selling your house, such that house flipping has long been a black market activity, causing Medium and Large houses to be flipped for at least twice the going rate.
The game needs an in-game mechanism for a seller to recoup their purchase price. So instead of selling a Medium for $18m gil + markup, they can specify just the markup (say as a percentage). This would allow SE to collect statistics on how often houses change hands, and apply taxes (i.e., gil sink on these exchanges), which SE simply does not have with the current system. Not to mention the benefit that buyers can avoid the sketchy black market types, whom could just as easily take the money and run.
For rl real estate, I guess that it's typical that the agent doing negotation agree to 10% of the property value? This sounds like what SE has in mind when they say that houses shouldn't be flipped for an excessive amount.
For when selling an in-game house, perhaps 10% is a reasonable cap. But whatever the cap is, that will have a normalizing effect on what the black market can charge, since a reasonably-minded person will balk at the current 100%+ black market markups.
Mind you, there's benefit to being able to just sell your house in preparation for suspending your account for a few months, without losing the purchase price. It is evident that the current system is designed to lock home owners into their SE subscriptions, but this is transparent exploitation by SE, on a par with the black market.
Continue reading...
The game needs an in-game mechanism for a seller to recoup their purchase price. So instead of selling a Medium for $18m gil + markup, they can specify just the markup (say as a percentage). This would allow SE to collect statistics on how often houses change hands, and apply taxes (i.e., gil sink on these exchanges), which SE simply does not have with the current system. Not to mention the benefit that buyers can avoid the sketchy black market types, whom could just as easily take the money and run.
For rl real estate, I guess that it's typical that the agent doing negotation agree to 10% of the property value? This sounds like what SE has in mind when they say that houses shouldn't be flipped for an excessive amount.
For when selling an in-game house, perhaps 10% is a reasonable cap. But whatever the cap is, that will have a normalizing effect on what the black market can charge, since a reasonably-minded person will balk at the current 100%+ black market markups.
Mind you, there's benefit to being able to just sell your house in preparation for suspending your account for a few months, without losing the purchase price. It is evident that the current system is designed to lock home owners into their SE subscriptions, but this is transparent exploitation by SE, on a par with the black market.
Continue reading...