Well, this is a convo Zhao had with a couple people earlier:
[23:45:08] Quay> is faction creation offline?
[00:55:51] G_Reed> Help me Sin-wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.
[00:56:05] Zhao> Eh?
[00:56:13] Zhao> It shouldn't be
[00:56:17] Zhao> But I think only the owner can create
[00:56:22] Zhao> You need to leave the faction otherwise
[00:56:35] G_Reed> Never worked like that for last factions I set up.
[00:56:43] G_Reed> That's only for IN-faction creation.
So I guess the official answer is "it shouldn't be," and if it isn't working despite the info provided, it may be a good idea to create a bug report (if one does not already exist) with as much information as you can provide so it can be fixed.
I created a faction yesterday, and it worked fine for me. As mentioned already, I had to leave my current faction, then transfer ownership manually for the new faction to be owned by the old one.