I need Homesteads to upgrade the Town Center.
What are they? Upgraded houses?
Do I get them by increasing Desireability?
Homestead are upgraded shelters (houses).
Once all requirements for upgrade is met, shelters will upgrade to homesteads.
Homesteads will upgrade to Large House.
Large House will upgrade to Manor.
Hope this helps. 
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Thank You. I guess the key is placing decorations around the homes to increase desireability.
I do it like this, and it works pretty well, and is somewhat cheap, 15 gold per decoration), but it’s well worth it.
I build my houses around the market, to maximize market income. 
And always keep industry away from the houses, to not affect the desirability.
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That’s all well and good, and you make it sound easy-peasy to get all those requirements met, but it is not easy, as most of the decorations needed to raise desirability of houses to 30% as part of what’s needed to raise them up to homesteads require gold ingots as one of the materials needed. Therefore . . .
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Since my Town Center is not yet tier 3, I do not have the ability to build a foundry to produce gold ingots.
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If I can’t make gold ingots right now, I’m left with (I think it is) the ONE decoration that does not require gold ingots to build, but which also raises desirability by only 1%, so that there is not enough usable room to build 30 of these low-end decorations!
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Twenty-five homesteads to be able to raise the Town Center to Tier 3 seems an awful lot.
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It also costs 1,200 gold ingots to pay for raising the Town Center to Tier 3. Since we can’t build foundries until AFTER the TC is raised to T3, and therefore can’t produce gold ingots, that seems a bit of a Catch-22.
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And not only the previous 4 points, but it also costs gold ingots to: build the Armory and the Barracks; build the Healer’s House; build the School; build the Vault in which to securely store gold ingots; and plant trees to grow and harvest to keep producing wood. Yeah, it’s Catch-22.
As for the Trading Post, yes, I’ve built one. But guess what? I don’t have any gold ingots to use to buy anything from the trader when he shows up. And I have a number of items checked to “keep in stock,” but my inventory of these items continues to be 0. Is there something else I have to do to get goods to the Trading Post so that I might finally get some gold ingots for selling them?
Note that I have built the houses apart from my buildings of production, trying to at least give them 4 or 5% desirability from the start.
Kinda frustrating to be told I need to produce something that the game is preventing me from producing in order to get the houses more desirable in order to get the TC to level up.
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Now, there’s a fine idea – putting the market in the center of a large group of houses. I must try it out in my next game! Thank you.
But . . . where do you put the wells?
I mean no offense but seems like you are doing something very wrong. Did you place the market near/in the middle of the houses? They increase the desirability and provide better ways to supply goods to the houses but most importantly the market collect taxes that are pretty much the best way to get gold early game, I’m almost at t4 and never made a single gold bar from smelting, you’re not really supposed to smelt/mine gold that early.
Could you upload some screenshots of your town? Maybe we can find out what exactly is causing your desirability to be that low
Oh, yes, I was doing something wrong, and it’s because, of course, I’m new to this game. I’ve only been playing about 23 hours so far. I saw more about placing a market in the center of some houses in a new guide. That was most helpful. This being an advance peek at a game in development (how exciting!) there are not definitive guides yet, so we’re all sort of stumbling about, anyway. Thanks for your concern. I appreciate your helpfulness.
There is another side to my difficulty with figuring all this out: we have a serious illness in the family and are experiencing stumbling blocks there, too. We need a guide for that, too! So I’m not exactly firing on all thrusters right now.
From my experience you get about 34% just with market, school and healer.
Getting the gold isn’t hard either. Don’t build too many things that cost you gold monthly.
For eample, tha rat catcher wants 4 or 8 gold a month, the healer 30 gold.
If noone is sick, or if there are no rats, then just disable the buildings. It’s important to disable, not just let then workplaces empty.
This way you should get 6-12 gold each year even with the lowest buildings. It gets more with more homesteads.
And don’t build defences until year 10 or so. They cost 10 initially plus training and upkeep (5).
The raiders are so weak, that you can kill them yourself.
select your villagers, tell them to gather near your trade post and storage facilities and send 5 at the thiefs first, then kill the rest.
Most of the time you get 2 different traders. They will not arrive at the same time.
But sometimes you can trade stuff from them between them.
For example: buy wood for 5 gold, sell it for 7 gold to the other trader.
Even if you only make 50 gold this way, it is a win, because you can then build a shrine. And this thing gives a huge bonus, which gives you more homesteads, that give you more gold.
And start building candles, pottery and clothes. The give extra income at the market and can be sold.
My luck with gold on the map is nonexisting. So my only way to make gold is trade and taxes.
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Awesome reply. Very informative. Thank You.
BTW…My 4th map reroll actually had Gold deposits spot. I built 3 gold mines on it. But for some reason, keeping my houses apart from industry, they hardly respond to chopping down trees even when Logs reads zero…
The “unemployed” laborers do the heavy lifting.
Sometimes the harvest command bugs out (not confirmed, just a feeling).
Undo the harvest command by holding down shift, and then make a box over the already marked trees/berries etc.
Then tell them to do it again.
Or there is too much stuff to do, for not enough people.
Try to have not too many things for them to do at once.
User the winter to your advantage. There are mostly no fish to catch, no fields to seed/harvest, no berries to pick. Unset all your foragers, fishermen, farmers when winter starts and you get lots of laborers that do the tree cutting and stone gathering.
Shortly before the new year, set them back.
It’s sad, that they didn’t copy that from Banished, where the poeple looked for jobs, when their own wasn’t possible. 
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Another idea on upgraded houses, is there a way for more people to live in them? I mean 4 for the shelters, 4 for homesteads, am not sure from there as haven’t progressed that far. But I think that the buildings should be able to contain more people, along with the rise in needs increased for this. Go from 4 in shelters to 5 or 6 in homestead, and 1 or 2 increase from there to the next and so on.
I also agree on the comparison with Banished. The citizens should look for work nearby. I mean don’t send them across the map because they need more there, but if harvesting is needed and the farmers are done with the crops (and maintenance scheduled) Have them harvest nearby resources if they are marked for harvest.
Also, what of forester’s huts or something to make the area sustainable, or do the trees grow back automatically in an area that has already been harvested?
Do not use any gold when tax time comes. Turn off any buildings or decorations that require gold and you should have enough gold to sell some goods. With gold that is created from the sell buy what you need and ship the excess gold back to the global pool. Rinse and repeat. (I still am sucking at gold and could not buy cattle until year 10. So take my suggest with large grain of suspect. )
LOL! I’m at 20 years and haven’t been able to buy any cattle! Mainly as I’m so preoccupied with the other building tasks – I’m only 4 homesteads away from a T3 Town Center! I totally miss some of the vendors’ visits! Yeah, I try to hang onto as much of the tax revenue as I can. I’ve been doing fairly well, though, at the Trading Post, even if I do miss some of the vendors! It’s getting better. It’s also difficult to store the gold until I can build a Vault, but the Town Center has to be at T3 for that, because I can’t build a Foundry until the TC is at T3. A lot depends on those 25 homesteads!
BTW, I like the name you’re using. Have you ever seen the Canadian TV show? It’s wonderful!
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I totally agree. In most games I play, larger accommodations do accommodate larger numbers of people.
I would love for the game to have Foresters.
What this game really NEEDS, is an overhead view map of your settlement. When you’re at the point of having all the tier 2 buildings either built or being built, its extremely confusing to get a clear SPACIAL “view” of your settlement; trying to strategically place new buildings in the best spot, because many look similar. I find myself clicking and clicking on buildings to try to get an idea where to place the next building.
Like a color-scale type / top-down view of your development would be a huge plus.