Go find an 18 x 18 non felucca house spot on Atlantic and one on Great Lakes. Let me know when you've found them.
I can show you dozen's of malas 18x18's on Great Lakes. There has not been a shortage of max storage houses in 4 years or more.
Everytime I run around the shard I fill a rune book.
If they do clean up the unused houses you will not believe how much open space.
I'll up that. I found and placed 2 houses reciently on Atlantic, and 18x18 and a 16 x18 right next door. 2 weeks before that i placed a 18x18 and sold it as i didnt need it at that time and this player was a returning vet I knew from serving in iraq. So saying Atlantic is not effected by the player loss is far fetched. I agree with you, there are so much open space that when house decay hits I am so afraid they will look at shards so empty....
My point was NBG seemed to think there is a glut of large housing and only people who want castles complain about blocking houses but that's incorrect on those 2 servers. There may have been dozens of open spots on GL before the Free House Exploit Week 2011 but now I doubt there's much more than 1 dozen spots in Malas.
As for the spots you found Lady Storm they aren't exactly open spots for other people to place now are they? Don't 18 x 18s still sell for a ton on Atlantic? People can't just set out to place an 18 x 18 and find one, they have to get randomly lucky like you (most people aren't IDOC hunting with decay turned off which is why you probably found open spots.) Even with it on such high prices ensure there is plenty of competition to place every available spot.
P.S. I'm still waiting for a link/name for your anonymous EA spokesman talking about houses dropping with no notice when its turned back on.