Also with your suggestion I quoted above, a far better approach would be for us to address that in dialogue. Let our character talk to someone and tell them whether or not we had a house.
Maybe ...
But the trouble with dialogues is that they are easily missed.
Especialy since certain dialogue triggers owerwrite each other, as we were complaining for last two years.

I liked this in Mass Effect ...
You pick some choices in character creation, and they are imediately implemented in opening sequence, when cap. Anderson (i think?) is talking about you as about potential spectre.