Heh, this seems like the best implementation of it.

I've always thought of player housing as a cool idea, but more trouble than it's worth. What would you have there? Where would you get furniture? Would the walls be moveable? If it's instanced, can you invite guests? Too much work for a place to create, admire, and just log out at, I thought.

But the idea of apartments in different places is cool. Say, 20 such residential neighborhoods: one in each major city, and 10 more in smaller towns like Ratchet or even isolated backwoods areas around the world. Maybe my druid wants to retire to the wilderness and his home would be up a tree in Feralas. They're instanced, so they'd look like tiny villages or isolated cabins (or whatever) from the outside, but you could have as many people with their homes there as wanted to. (Which would get weird at times, of course, but no weirder than lots of stuff in the game.) Most people would prefer Dalaran or another major city because that's where the action is, but for RPers, people with alts who don't need to go to the city much, characters focused on stuff off the beaten path...

That being said, I don't want Blizzard to waste development time on player housing unless the new system is big enough to take over some of the current functions of inns and hearthstones, and I really doubt they'll change those.