What region in the real world are you referring to? I've not seen such conditions on the west coast. In these parts, squatters would have a field day in the scenario that you describe.
I grew up on the beach on the East coast and there was 100s of houses that rich people owned that they only used once every 1-3 years. Drove the property values up so much the locals almost can't afford to live in their own town. That's a real thing
I'm in the US. That happens all of the time here. It's a complicated situation in real life. On UO, not so much a majority of the houses are owned by person(s) on accounts, they have not, will never be used, but will be refreshed forever. The idoc system needs a few revamps (owner only refreshes after 3 months, random timers, no afk sign checking macros, etc)
Remembering the housing situation c. 1999, I have no complaints about this server. It took me over a year even to find a small plot to place a house at the time. Backwoods smalls were going for 200-300k.
Add to that 75%+ of the items are insta-removed from game when house falls and 1 home-owner per account.
