FFXIV Housing Guide: How to Build a House - Final Fantasy XIV Guide - IGN (2024)

Housing in FFXIV is an immersive feature intended to help you have a space all your own, or with members of your Free Company. With interior and exterior customization options, as well as in-game activities to partake in, there are plenty of reasons to get onto the housing ladder!

This page acts as a comprehensive breakdown of the steps required to build a house within FFXIV, including housing locations, the housing market, and more!

Looking for something specific? Click one of the links below to jump to...

• FFXIV Housing Formats
• FFXIV Housing Zones
• The Housing Market in FFXIV
• How to Unlock Housing
• How to Get a Construction Permit
• FFXIV Housing Lottery
• Where is the Housing Zone?
• Personal Housing
• Private Chambers
• Apartments
• Island Sanctuary
• Auto-Demolition

FFXIV Housing Formats

Housing is split into 3 different main formats, with 1 additional pseudo-housing option with the addition of the Island Sanctuary:

• Free Company housing
  • Private chambers available for members for 300,000 gil each (limit 512 chambers)
  • Company Workshop for Free Company Airship and Submersible construction
• Personal housing
  • No Private Chamber
  • No Company Workshops or Airships
  • You can share with up to 3 friends via the Tenant system
• Apartments
  • Apartment building in every ward and another in the subdivision
  • Each apartment building can house up to 90 tenants; each room costs 500,000 gil
  • Possible to own an estate and an apartment simultaneously
• Island Sanctuaries
  • "Home away from home" possibilities while in your Sanctuary
  • Not intended to replace the housing system/market

FFXIV Housing Zones

There are currently 5 different housing zones in-game:

• Mist (Limsa Lominsa)

• Lavender Beds (Gridania)

• The Goblet (Ul'dah)

• Shirogane (Kugane)

• Empyreum (Ishgard)

There are no differences between the housing wards aside from their locations and looks. Players can get a house anywhere regardless of their Grand Company allegiance.

The Housing Market in FFXIV

With patch 2.1, Free Company Housing became available. Any FC that has reached rank 6 is eligible to purchase a house, called an estate, although it can be quite costly. Speaking of, here's a link to some gil making strategies.

In order to get your estate set up, you must first purchase a plot of land. The cost of a plot is based on the size and 'grade' of the plot. The costs for each type of plot are as follows:

Plots can go down in price if they aren't purchased quickly enough. However, due to the sheer scarcity of housing, this rarely occurs. You must also build a house on your plot in order to use it. You must do this within 45 days or you will lose the land and it will go back to the market for anybody to snap up.

Houses come in the following sizes, and can only be built on plots of land that match the size of the building:

How to Unlock Housing

Wealthy individuals can own their own house, but it's far easier to pull your resources together and purchase an estate hall for your Free Company. In order to do this, your Free Company must reach level 6. This can be done by simply doing more of what your FC has already done in the past. Leveling, completing quests, and finishing guildleves all add to your progress towards ranking up. Upon reaching FC level 6, your leader can then go to one of the available housing zones outside of each major town.

With or without money in hand, you can always visit the local housing zones on your server. This is great for attending social events or meeting the neighbors ahead of time. You can walk around, browsing the different lots. And then you can purchase a plot of land right then and there if something suits your fancy and is available. With the plot, you can then set out and begin building your estate at your leisure.

How to Get a Construction Permit

In order to build on your purchased plot of land, you'll need a Construction Permit. In order to attain one, you'll need to complete the following steps:

• Head to the Social menu
• Select the 'Housing' drop-down option
• Select 'Estate Hall'
• Buy a permit for the type of building you want
• Select 'Build Estate Hall'

With those steps complete, you simply need to wait for construction to finish, which can range from between a couple of hours to a full 24 hours, depending on the build.

FFXIV Housing Lottery

Starting with Patch 6.1, a lottery system was introduced that allows more people to contest over a property. You will no longer be able to simply walk up and buy a plot of land, and you can only have 1 entry ticket in place at once.

In order to enter the lottery for a plot of land, you'll need to do the following things:

• Access the placard at the entrance of an available plot of land that you would like to purchase
• Select the "Enter Lottery" option, agreeing to the T&C's
• Deposit the full sum of the plot's value

With those steps done, you'll see the lottery entry confirmed in your log window, and can be viewed at any time in the Housing tab. During the results period of any given lottery draw, you can confirm the results of said lottery by accessing the placard in front of the plot of land.

Winning the Lottery

Should you be lucky enough to win the lottery draw, you will need to finalize your purchase of the plot by accessing the placard at its entrance. Should you fail to claim your plot of land during the results period, your claim to that land will be forfeit, you'll lose access to it, and a 50% cancellation fee will be deducted from your initial deposit.

Losing the Lottery

If you unfortunately lose the lottery draw, you will receive a 100% refund of the deposit paid on entry. This is NOT automatic however, and must be withdrawn within the 90 real-world days following the lottery's conclusion. Failure to accept your refund within this time will result in the loss of that refund.

Where is the Housing Zone?

Housing instances are given their own zone, and most of these zones can be found attached to the low-level areas outside of the starting cities. Once at the entrance, you can choose between 24 different instanced "wards" to visit which each host their own plots of land. There are 60 plots of land per ward. These are split between a main area (plots 1-30) and a subdivision (plots 31-60). Each half ward also has its own apartment complex, which suits up to 90 different players. This means the main area has an apartment complex as well as the subdivision, totaling 180 apartment units for sale per ward.

NOTE: The caveat with FFXIV's housing system is that once a property is owned, no other player on the same server can own that same property. This makes housing extremely limited!

The entrances to each housing zone are located here:

• Mist - Lower La Noscea - X34,Y19
• Lavender Beds - Central Shroud - X27,Y26
• The Goblet - Western Thanalan - X25,Y27
• Shirogane - Kugane - X8.9,Y10.4
• Empyreum - Ishgard - X14.2 ,Y12.5

If walking isn't your thing, however, you can complete a quest in each starting town that will allow you to use that town's Aethernet to teleport directly to the housing zone, or use a Miniature Aetheryte to teleport directly to your home.

• Where the Heart Is (Mist)- Lower La Noscea
  • Ahctkoen - X32,Y20
• Where the Heart Is (Lavender Beds) - Central Shroud
  • Margeria - X21,Y22
• Where the Heart Is (The Goblet) - Western Thanalan
  • Imme - X25,Y24
• I Dream of Shirogane (Shirogane) - Kugane
  • Tsurubami - X12,Y9.9
• Ascending to Empyreum (Empyreum) - Ishgard
  • Gondelimbaud - X9.9,Y11.8

As the name implies, this form of housing is only available to Free Companies. Before you can purchase it, your FC must reach rank 6, where they will unlock the Land Acquisition entitlement. This form of housing is expected to be much bigger than personal housing, but also costs significantly more, making it a long term investment for most Free Companies.

More information about housing can be found in your neighborhood's Resident Caretaker.

Personal Housing

Players are able to purchase their own land and houses. These can be used for personal use, or for Free Company use.

Once obtained, you can make various changes to them, including the ability to furnish them. This is basically the same as Free Company estates, but you're not necessarily sharing the space (or the cost of ownership) with anyone else.

Private Chambers

Private chambers can be purchased within existing Free Company-owned houses and estates, and are basically like apartments that you've leased from your FC. This is the most affordable housing option since it only costs 300,000 gil to buy a private chamber. Before purchasing private chambers, players must first attain level 50 with at least one class. Furthermore, players must have attained the rank of second lieutenant in the Maelstrom, The Order of the Twin Adder, or The Immortal Flames.

• The size of private chambers is the same regardless of estate size.
• All estates are allowed up to 512 private chambers.

Apartments

Every ward has two apartment buildings. The first one is in the main area, and the second one is in the subdivision. Each apartment building has vendors and an NPC who can get you settled with a room. Through this NPC, you can rent a room, visit any room in the complex, or return to your room.

Apartments are indoors-only, much like private chambers within estates, meaning that you can't assign any outdoor decorations or gardens to apartments. You can install an aquarium and potted plants, however. Apartments go for 500,000 gil.

Island Sanctuary

Whilst not intended to be a full-time permanent residence option like the others listed above, there are housing options of a sort within your Island Sanctuary.

The Island Hideaway is essentially a base of operations on the Island, where you have access to The Cozy Cabin, a Workshop, Granary, Croplands and more. As such, it isn't housing in the sense of purchasing and owning a plot of land (your Island Sanctuary is instanced solely to you by default), but it can still be a place to ground yourself whilst you interact with the content exclusive to the Island.

Auto-Demolition

After one real-time month (30 Earth days, to be precise), your estate will be scheduled for auto-demolition if you fail to enter it. After 45 Earth days, it will be demolished and somebody else will be able to buy up the now vacant plot.

If this happens, you can claim indemnification for 80% of the plot's previous value, but you will lose the plot and potentially need to wait for an entirely different plot to open up elsewhere before you can establish estate ownership again.

Looking for more? Maybe you need some more gil to help you make that purchase of a house or plot of land? Check out our Gil-Making Strategies page for all the best tips to maximize your currency gains!