There are so many fancy-looking habitat designs in the game. The question is "Any particular benefit apart from looking different than your neighbours?" You will find the answer here. As always, feel free to conduct your own experiment.
EXPERIMENT #1: Basic Dirt Habitat vs Pedestal Habitat
I hatched two Horned Steve almost at the same time (only FOURTY seconds gap). I placed one Steve in the basic dirt habitat and i placed another one in the expensive looking pedestal habitat. Just before they reached maturity (four stars/age where they can make eggs), i took two screenshots and here are the results:
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Basic Dirt Habitat |
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Pedestal Habitat |
There is a difference between them but it's not significant at all. Honestly, for me, this difference is too small to be taken into account. So, my (temporary) conclusion is, habitat that available for gold coin purchase provide very small breeding benefit but makes your shop looks different. To reach full conclusion, i need to conduct one more experiment using habitat that only available for purchase using Monster Berries. It will take a while though, so you don't need to stay tune in front of your screen :D
UPDATE:
EXPERIMENT #2: Basic Habitat vs Premium Habitat
I made another experiment using two Stripey Chuffles. I placed one on the basic grass habitat and another one on the Glass Ring Habitat, a premium habitat that only available for 30 Monster Berries.
Same method as Experiment #1 and here is the result:
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Basic Grass Habitat |
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Premium/Glass Ring Habitat |
At the same time, Chuffle on premium habitat advance faster to three-stars compared with Chuffle on basic habitat. In the end, Chuffle on the premium habitat mature faster than Chuffle on the basic habitat:
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Basic Grass Habitat |
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Premium/Glass Ring Habitat |
If i recall correctly, Chuffle on premium habitat mature 15 - 20 minutes faster than the one on the basic habitat. The verdict, fancy habitat does affect your breeding time. Also, i'm pretty sure that breeding time is reduced using percentage-based calculation (example: -20% breeding time) instead of time-based calculation (example: -20 minutes breeding time). So, if you breed a lengthy monster such as Marinna or Snorker, the number of minutes you will save could be greater than just 15 - 20 minutes. To prove this, i will do the third experiment in the near future.