In Ocarina of Time you can farm rupees right outside the gate too.
Technically on the gate itself if you stand on it when it rises.
You can actually walk up the chains for those, only learned that recently…
Oh yeah, forgot you could do that too!
Shields didn’t break after a week back then either
Interest rates were actually surprisingly high “back in the day”. The last 10 or so years have been an outlier in how low they are. But buying a house at a much lower real cost, even at a 10% interest rate, would probably be easier back then due to higher relative wages.
High interest probably made it harder for companies to mass buy out homes and rent them out as well
Hell back in my day we straight up set fire to our wooden shields just for fun and an excuse to go ruin a gate guard’s day by smashing all his pots.