Housing

One of the great aspects of SWG is that you can become immersed in your selected galaxy and "live" in a house. Saving up credits to purchase the home of your dreams is often an early goal for players. Houses are a great place to show off loot and other collections, to store items, to stay in for protection against attack, to craft, or to visit with friends.

Houses and Player Cities
Houses can be a part of a player city, and are indeed the most important (and necesary) part. If you place a house within the city limits of a player city, or if the city limits are increased so that your house comes within city limits, you will become a citizen of that player city--with all the abilities and taxes that come with it. Note that you must declare residence in that house in order to become a citizen. This assures each character can be a citizen of only one player city at any one time. You must wait 12 hours before you can declare residence again, even if you redeed and then replace the same house in the same player city.

Placing a House
Placing a house is rather simple. Find an open area that is relatively flat. Placement restrictions are more relax for houses than for harvesters, so that player cities have more viable real estate. Once you are in the general area, generate the structure from the deed's radial menu. You will get a face-down map of the area around your character. Move the cursor to move the placement of the house. If the highlight is green, you are allowed to place in that particular spot; if the highlight is red, you have to choose a different location. Right-clicking will rotate the house 90 degrees to the right. The map will be orientented with North facing up. Left-click when the highlight is green to place the house in that location.

Lots
Houses come in a wide variety of sizes. Each size will have a different footprint size (the area on the world that it will take up) and lot size. Small and medium houses all take up 2 lots, with the exception of the round Small Naboo House, which takes up only 1 lot. All large houses and guild halls take up 5 lots. Each character has a limit of 10 lots. Note: Lot sizes were reduced in Publish 13 for large houses and guild halls.

Storage
While small houses may seem small, you would be surprised how many things you can pack into it--even if nothing was in a factory crate or other container. Because of natural database limitations, each house has a storage limit of how many items can be dropped in the house. You can view the current number of items by accessing the Status option from the house's structure terminal.

The storage rule to remember is 100 items per lot with a max of 400 items. These means smalls or and mediums have a limit of 200; larges and guild halls have a limit of 400. The round Small Naboo House has a limit of 100. Note: House storage limits were increased in Publish 13.

Maintenance
Like other structures, houses require hourly credit maintenance. This could be viewed a utility bills or costs for upkeep. In any case, it is deducted from your bank account every hour. If your bank account is empty, it will come out of your cash. If your character has no credits, the house becomes condemned--the entrance will be locked until the repair maintenance is paid. Regular maintenance will continue to build up. The good thing is that the house will not be destroyed, no matter how long maintenance is not paid.

The daily maintenance is dependent on the size of the house. Smalls require 384 credits/day, mediums 816/day, larges 1200/day, and guild halls 2400/day. This does not include player city property taxes, which will increase your hourly maintenance by a certain percentage.

Player cities may also charge an income tax to citizens. This is a set amount of credits taxed to each citizen, regardless of the size of their house, in addition to any property taxes.

House Designs and Floorplans
The official SWG site has had images as well on a Friday Feature from 9/26/03: Player Houses Index Note that the statistical information is out of date. The floorplans are very accurate and informative.

Redeeding
If you decide to move to a different location, you can take your house with you! You must first empty the house of all items, or they will be destroyed when the house is redeeded. At the time of redeeding, you must make sure you have enough maintenance paid in order to pay the cost of redeeding. The cost can be calculated by multiplying 50 by the maintenance rate. This redeed cost will be deducted from the maintenance pool when the structure returns to a deed. The rest of the maintenance will remain attached to the deed, but is not retrievable.

To redeed, select Destroy Structure on the radial menu from the house's structure terminal. A window will pop up telling you if you have enough maintenance, in case your calculations are correct. You can opt out of the redeed a few times, just in case you're not sure.

Planet Restrictions
Each house design can be placed on select planets. To find out which planets your deed is eligible for, simply examine the deed.

Current rules are:
 * Corellian - buildable on Corellia, Talus
 * Naboo - buildable on Naboo, Rori, Dantooine
 * Tatooine - buildable on Tatooine, Lok, Dantooine
 * Generic - buildable on Corellia, Talus, Naboo, Rori, Dantooine, Tatooine, Lok

Houses cannot be placed on Endor, Yavin IV, Dathomir, or Kashyyyk. Harveters and factories can be placed on these planets, with the exception of Kashyyyk.

Merchant Tents
Merchant Tents are housing-like structures that are ideal for Merchants, as they are easy for customers to identify and visit when searching for vendors. These tents have a very small footprint and take up only 1 lot, limiting the item capacity to 75 items. But since most items would logically be on the vendors, 75 items is often plenty for decorating the store for customers. A player needs Efficiency IV from Merchant in order to place a Tent. The maitenance is 240 credits/day, which includes the 20% bonus granted at the skill required to place the Tent. The redeed cost is 600 credits.

Merchant tents come in three colors: gray, brown, and green. Other than that, there are no style differences. Tents have the same building restrictions as Generic houses.