It would acually be the same as i cant imagine that a villa would take up more land that two farms (with barn included!) with just 3 more rooms. So either way you are forced to upgrade land/plot, if we go with RL standards. The graphic of the house doesnt really fit anything you would call a villa, its more a school or a large apartment building from the looks of it?

Also it should be logical that a smaller house fits in a larger plot, so upgrading all your plots is the way to go anyway (which should be able to be done while the house is placed), should have made that clear.

On that note: An apartment lacks the width of a villa but has more hight, RL again, so you can place more apartments than anything else and end up with MUCH more land left & numbers of rooms to decorate, as pumpkin/plant/pixpet spots dont matter.

Again, with RL standards as if we go with house parts a villa is equal to an apartment, as the difference is just one house part.
But if you could have 9 villas which have 63 house parts, you can have 10 apartments which take 60 house parts and dont get me started with the Starter House & any 2 house parts house xD Oh my Grima!

This might create a shortage of apartments/smaller houses when players want more rooms to have them themed instead of space to play with and overuse them as storage, as everyone will fear.

(using RL because we all can play with that)

Both has pros and cons, but different ways of implementing it helps polish the general idea i think as we should figure out the most perfect way to balance it.

Which brings me to a few question:
How many houses should you be able to have, whats the limit?
Is there a general limit of land?
How much in villas, as they are the biggest house we can currently have?