Topic title sums it up. While shopping for houses I've found both 'expensive' and 'cheap' houses, ranging from mansions to tiny trailer homes, that are simply not available for purchase by players. They have accessible front doors, are not 'business' buildings, and have either a garage door or a space for RPly parking your vehicles. I think these houses should be purchasable by players.
Why should/shouldn't this be considered?
Pros:
More opportunities for players to get more involved with/connected to the server. May help player retention if they have more of a stake in the server. Just by purchasing my first 70k shack I felt like I'd really advanced as an ECRP player.
More real estate opportunities both for long-term buyers and flippers, leading to another money sink for players as well as a way to gain money at the same time depending on how you approach it.
More organic feel, helping with RP, when you know that house you passed definitely belongs to someone, and if not, it's up for sale.
Cons:
May devalue existing houses. Not a big deal IMO, coming from someone who just purchased a nice house in VW for the first time. House value will go back up over time as the new houses are purchased and the existing pool of available houses grows smaller again.
Requires some effort from server developers. Not a big deal again, I think the hardest parts would be deciding new address names as well as where to place the doors, which doesn't strike me as difficult. (Some door placements are super wonky already!)
I was thinking about making a general house overhaul suggestion but that'd be a lot of work, and I think this suggestion can yield a lot of good for the relatively small amount of work it would require. Thoughts?
