How to get a house or apartment in FFXIV

Housing in Final Fantasy 14 is a hot topic, and while it used to be really hard to get a housing plot, it’s now all up to chance.

If you’re looking to invest in digital property, you have a lot of stuff to consider, and we’re here to make that easier for you. Below, we list out all of the basics on how to get a house in FFXIV, including everything you need to know before investing in a house.

Before you even bother, though, note that free trial players cannot buy a house.

Below, we detail how to get an apartment and house in FFXIV.

How housing works in FFXIV

Once upon a time, housing involved invisible timers and camping out at placards, clicking for hours in hopes you would snipe a plot, but this isn’t the case anymore. Now, if you want a housing plot, you’ll have to enter a lottery system. If you win the lottery, you get your own house to decorate! (More on that below.)

Houses offer a handful of benefits, but you do not need one to play FFXIV. In a house, you can place a personalized chocobo stable in your yard to dye or strengthen your bird, grow rare crops in a garden, and even set up vendor NPCs to sell you basic goods directly from the comfort of your own home.

There are five housing districts you can buy property in:

• The Lavender Beds (Gridania)
• Mist (Limsa Lominsa)
• The Goblet (Ul’dah)
• Shirogane (Kugane)
• Empyreum (Ishgard).

Each district has different visual aesthetics, so you should tour all of the areas to see which one you like the best. If you want to stay in a neighborhood filled with greenery, for instance, The Lavender Beds is probably your ideal spot. If you want an icy winter vibe, though, then you should check out the Empyreum.

Image: Square Enix

Each district has 30 wards, which are effectively just different instances of each other. Each ward looks the same, but it just gives players more plots to attempt to purchase. Each ward has 60 housing plots of various sizes. To save you from the math, that means there are 9,000 plots per server you can try and score.

You can also share ownership of your personal house with your friends, so they can also use your stable, decorate the house, or teleport to it easily.

What to know before buying a house in FFXIV

Before you buy a house in FFXIV, you should know that it costs millions of gil for plots of even the smallest size. You should also know that your house will be automatically demolished if you (or your Free Company, if it’s a FC house) does not enter it once every 45 days. If you’re planning on taking an extended break from FFXIV, you may lose your house. If you’re OK with a smaller place to decorate, an apartment may be better suited for your needs.

It’s important to also take a gander at what size house you want. Small-, medium-, and large-sized houses all have different housing layouts in general, and it’s probably worth running into a couple of strangers’ homes to see what it’s like. Small houses only have two floors, medium houses have three, and large houses have three very sprawling floors. Apartments and different-sized houses also have varying furniture limits. Apartments can only hold 100 items, small houses can hold 200, medium houses can hold 300, and large houses can hold 400.

Know that there are lots of small plots to snap up, but medium and large plots are less common and thus have more competition when the lottery for one opens up.

How to get an apartment in FFXIV

To get an apartment, you’ll need to have attained at least second lieutenant rank in your Grand Company. Your apartment will also cost you 500,000 gil. Once you know which housing district you want your apartment in, you can head into the apartment building and talk to the Apartment Caretaker NPC to buy your apartment.

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Unlike houses, there are a ton of apartment rooms available. While you may not find one available in the first few wards of your server, you should be able to find a room to purchase quite quickly.

Similar to apartments, if you’re in a Free Company that has a house, you can buy a room or “private chambers” for 300,000 gil by going to the back of the house and clicking on the glowing private chambers entrance. These are functionally the same thing as an apartment, though you won’t have access to a chocobo stable unless your FC placed one outside of the house.

Apartments and private chambers are not subject to automatic demolition, and you cannot share ownership of them.

How to get a house in FFXIV

Individual buyers will need to be at least level 50 and attained at least second lieutenant rank in your Grand Company.

FCs have to be at rank six or higher with four or more members. If you’re buying a house for your FC, you’ll also need the housing permissions and to have been a member of the FC for at least 30 days.

You’ll also need gil to buy a plot. Small plots range from 3-4 million gil, medium-sized plots go for 16-20 million gil, and large-sized plots go for 40-50 million gil.

Once you have all that squared away, you’re ready to try to get a house!

All houses are on a lottery system, and some wards specify what kind of housing you can buy. You can check this info by talking to the NPC who brings you to the housing districts and looking at the emblems at the top. The multiple dots indicate that the ward is for Free Companies and the single person indicates that it’s for individual buyers. Wards can also be set to offer both FC and individual houses, using an emblem that’s a combination of the two of them:

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

From there, you can put your hat in the lottery for one plot per lottery period. You can do so by interacting with the placard of the plot you want during the entry period for the lottery. You’ll need to pay the gil upfront as a deposit.

After the entry period is over, the results period will begin. Go back to the plot placard to either get your gil back if you didn’t win, or finalize your purchase if you did win!

If you win a plot and you do not claim it during the entry period, then you will lose the plot and it’ll go back into the lottery pool. You will also lose 50% of your deposit.

After you actually win your plot, you’ll have 45 days to buy a housing permit from one of the vendors in the housing wards. If you do not do this within 45 days, you will lose your plot. It costs 450,000 gil for a small plot, 1 million gil for a medium one, and 3 million gil for a large one.

Once you do this and plunk your house down on your plot, you’re a homeowner! Hooray! You can decorate your house with furniture by selecting the “housing” option in the social menu and really start to go nuts. If you can’t own a home in real life, at least you have one in a video game!