In a semi-related note, is there a way to place objects farther away from within the home while in home editing mode?

Example:
When I was doing some decorating in the tower at "Hunding's Palatial Hall," I hung hanging lights in the archways. It wasn't terribly difficult. (Except when I would mouse-over too far and the lamp would be hundreds of feet away, mid-air.)

From inside Twin Arches (is this a McDonald's reference?) to hang something in the main room from the center of the "raised" ceiling area, I have to place numerous furniture items on the ground, leave home editing mode, climb up on the furniture, return to editing mode, then place the lamp-hanging-on-a-chain from the ceiling in order to get it close enough to the ceiling that it looks right and is not suspended in mid-air.

Surely there's a better way to do this.

It's probably a good idea to separate your posts when they are about quite different things - Maelstrom Arena will be dealt with by the Dungeons Team, Housing issues by the Housing Team.

Have you reported where exactly vMA is crashing? Are you on PC or console? If you're on PC, try turning your graphics settings down before you run the arena which crashes. Also, disable large, memory-hungry addons such as Master Merchant which don't give you any useful information while you're in Maelstrom anyway.