Since we KNOW 1.9 will jack up the map pretty hard, which means people are like fuggit as far as building goes, there will be a full court press tonight on getting the land plots all outlined and put up for sale on the map.
Anything you build on a purchased plot will be migrated with Emain Macha to the new server, so it'd be safe to keep building (You could also move your stuff in there).
As it stands, the house sized plots will go for between 30k and 75k. The manor sized plots will go for between 200k and 350k. The Estates will go for ~1.25mil and ~1.5mil (the island estate may be more or less, I don't know yet).
You can buy (from the server) 2 house plots and either 1 manor plot or 1 estate plot. You can buy/sell any from/to any player, but you cannot buy any more from the server (i.e., once you've bought two house plots you cannot buy any more - this is to prevent someone from buying up a ton of land through brokers)
The exception to this is that if you buy a manor, and later sell it, you can then buy an estate (once).
This being said, since the ability to sell is relatively recent, and with the release of 1.9 being a pretty big unknown, you can put 50% down on land now to purchase it.
I'm open to suggestions on paying it off, but I think giving people 30 days (AFTER the release of 1.9) to pay it completely off is fair, it's not really tough to make money with the way prices are and the raw materials needed for EM.
Anyone not paying their "mortgage" off in that time will get the whole plot frozen (i.e., no add/remove blocks, chests will be locked, etc)
So, if you want to do this, let me know... I am going to get the plots outlined tonight, and the WG regions all set up.
Basically, the closer you are to one of the main roads as well as proximity to the center of the city, will determine the price range for that plot type. I.e., the estate just NW of the rail nexus AT spawn is $1.5mil, the houses all the way in the corners are $30k.