Here's a thought I have about real estate. What if instead of buying a "house", we bought a plot (or if that were also an option, to buy undeveloped real estate), and we got to specify how to develop it?
(I realized as I was writing that that complete houses would still likely need to be for sale, so that I could sell my house and move on later, but yeah.)
And then we would be able to choose from different ways to upgrade things as we desired, given the size of the plot (and maybe its location? maybe certain trees wouldn't grow in my yard, depending). And maybe I could have a barn raising to seek other players help in actually constructing things (a player-initiated project of sorts), or maybe I could just slowly build it out myself, or maybe I would just ask friends to help me do things.
The location that is my current house is sort of a bi-level, with the "house" upstairs, and the "yard" down a ladder. In truth, I'm not currently clear that there's a function for a "house" per se beyond having a front door. I use my home to hold stuff for me, and to raise crops and animals -- the outdoors is more important than the indoors in my usage.
(If there were regular rainstorms, now that might keep my trees tended (and if I could train my pigs to rub up against the trees and "pet" them) and it might mean that I couldn't leave things outdoors and would care that I had an indoors. Maybe my paper would dissolve, my potatoes would sprout, my planks would rot, etc. But right now, I don't care about the indoors.)
I do wonder if the notion of vertical space could be used better, and maybe I could dig an underground cavern and plant eggplants, for example, or dig down to my own mine. This is probably touching on something that should be more true in the game in general, that the maps are not just 2d, but 3d. I'm imagining, for example, that cherry and bean and spice trees grow at level 0, and eggplants are at level -1 and mines are at level -2, and that gas and bubble trees might be at level 1.