House farming- easy cash or lazy gamesmanship?

I bet most players were huge house farmers at the beginning. I was one, then after I got more land, buildings and characters I put in storage my plethora of houses and began organizing my town.

You can still farm, but with aesthetics. For example, right now I am "farming" with 14 orange houses, but instead of having them clustered together in one corner, I have arranged them as a horizontal condominium.