Second Home owners doing sad faces in the press about council tax increase

You re wrong.

Most of the houses sold as 2nd homes, came available due to death, the adult children long ago moved out of the area.. or the owners moving out of the area..

But one woman posted on local FB page that her mothers house was now up for sale but she refused point blank to take any offers from "outsiders"

Locals don't have 2 or 3 houses gathering dust waiting to be snapped up by a couple from Surrey...

@taxguru 100% i tried pointing this out many pages ago....

Can't understand why a few people have compared owning more than one car to more than one house! There is no shortage of cars. There's a desperate shortage of housing. Two very different things and completely different circumstances. If there wasn't a shortage of homes, then this wouldn't really be a problem and we'd not have this thread. It's exactly because there IS a shortage of homes that we are right to examine whether some people should have more than one, whether some should profit out of the misery of others, and look into ways of dealing with the shortage.

I suppose the difference is that the second home hasn’t been acquired through choice.

Any extra council tax could be avoided by putting the inherited home on the market, although I believe the council is required to give you a years notice of any increase. So, possibly two years to decide what to do with it.

It is obviously very tough to lose a much loved partner at a young/fairly young age and I'm very sorry that this has happened to you.

However, you are absolutely right that this is a very nice problem to have and one that most people who are bereaved before retirement do not have. Most of them need to continue to work, raise and provide for their families alone. That really is tough and the reality for most of this group.

Owning two and even three houses in your case, which are not rented out, does deprive others of a home to rent or buy. How ever you dress it up, it does. No one needs three homes but everyone needs one. As a society, we have become far too focussed on the individual and selfishness and greed have been lauded to ridiculous extremes, to the detriment of many. This has gone so far in this direction now that we have a major housing crisis and a very divided society.
If people who own multiple properties are encouraged to sell them or made to pay higher taxes, this is a good thing overall. Cars, etc are different because they are not a basic need in the way that housing clearly is. The rest of your comment is not really related to this topic or is hyperbole at this stage.

How do you expect to be classed when you own two homes? I'm not sure why this is surprising to you.

Why the confused emoji? That's what you are.

Not sure why you needed to add the 🤔. You are a 2nd home owner. Not intentionally but you are nevertheless. I think a lot of 2nd home owners become so via an inherited home.

I agree with extra council tax, no problem..
It's interesting though, because the second home owners presumably bought from locals, at an increased price.......

Ive obviously been doing my holidays wrong all these years as well, apart from snacks, the usual cheese, crackers, accutriments that go with that, we eat out for nearly every meal, plus we tend to buy a lot of stuff, particularly from clothing boutiques that we wouldnt have near us.

We've booked a week in an apartment later this month. It's just over £800 for the week and includes onsite parking. While we're there we'll eat out a couple of times, get a couple of takeaways and shop in the local shops.

I also looked at a hotel we've stayed at previously, over £1k for the week for a basic room (I know they have staffing costs), parking extra (bloody cheek!) and we'd have to eat out for every meal. Restaurants are stupidly expensive so there's no way we could afford to do it.

I read this on Apple News this morning: I inherited my parents’ house, now I’m classed as a 2nd home owner 🤔

I still don't think it is straight forward.

1. LAs have lost skills in this area over the last few years. This shortage won't be solved overnight. The lack of those skills can and does impact strategic decision making and the quality of housebuilding projects delivered.
2. Legislation is great but is more often focused on meeting minimum targets like space requirements rather than considering what should be required for a reasonable quality of life for the resident or the broader community. In my own area developments allowed, whether HMOs, flats or homes are shoe horned in, placing further strain on an already stretched local infrastructure – schools, hospitals, GPs, and green spaces – and negatively affect the overall quality of life for all residents. At what cost has the target been met?
3. Land for cash strapped HAs. Which feeds into point 2. Greenfield sites are for obvious reasons much more attractive to developers than brownfield sites. These brownfield sites may be in a more appropriate location but are often more time consuming and costly to prepare for development. What about land which has already been acquired by developers or land which developers already have options on? How do HAs access this prime land?

I am suspicious of everyone.

As well as that, people living in those homes full-time would also contribute to the local economy all year long.

Starmer has even less money now to pay for social housing, so don't blame him! he hasn't been in charge for 14years and he didn't cut NI, costing the Govt by £10billion per year...

The rescue of steel will costs billions, as will supporting business fucked by that xxxx Trump...

...and the wealthy are hoarding all they can!!

I’m glad someone is thinking about the local species. It’s all about economic development and nothing at all about our environment.

It can be made a condition of sale. I’ve seen it on Welsh property before. Buyers have to prove that they have been a local resident for a specified number of years. Obviously you won’t sell it for as much but if you are really anti second home owners..

How would the sellers know? When I bought the house I am in now I didn’t tell the buyer what I was going to use it for or where I was moving from.

Starmer wont say how many of his 1.5m mythical houses will be for social rent either.....

I have no doubt the weasel words 'affordable housing' will be prevalent.

They aren't my in-laws? They are my brother's wife's parents. I don't really know them know them. This was relayed by my niece (their early twenties granddaughter).

They certainly didn't sell for altruistic reasons but from what she said, when they met the buyer they did get a dawning realisation that they were enabling someone who would be really part of the community to live there again. They only went to the house a couple of times a year and didn't let it out, so it mainly sat empty. It is in a nice coastal area, popular with holiday makers. But the house was a small one in a residential estate so perfect for a young family. It's a renovation job from what my niece has said

Because the 2nd home owners she talking about leave it empty and only use it themselves sparsely. They don't rent it out.
That's the 2nd home owners she's discussing predominantly. Leaving communities empty all year round.

By dint of history and inaction by me and my late husband I have found myself with 3 properties. We used to rent 2 out on a long term basis to families, but when he died 6 years ago I stopped. Successive governments have regulated / taxed the private rented sector such that the return isn’t worth the risk. That’s fine…I don’t mind that, but there are now 2 less rental properties on the market.

I have been paying council tax on them all, which is also fine - I have worked hard most of my working life to make sure I can maintain a reasonable lifestyle in retirement and I split my time between them. Now, having retired (early, because after he died I didn’t see the point in accumulating more stuff) I am still coming to terms with a retirement without him, so I really don’t know where I actually want to be. All are in locations that are good, for different reasons. City, country, coastal. If I put any of them on the market they would, in all probability, go to local professionals or be second homes. But, the transaction costs of moving now are also so high (stamp duty in particular) that I am unwilling to sell, and then possibly have a change of heart about where I want to be and need to buy again.

I realise that in some respects it’s a nice problem to have, but then I’d rather have my husband and the life we had. I’ll pay the tax, as I have all my life, until I work it out.

But, when does it stop? Should any household with more than one car pay double VAT on all additional cars, and a 200% surcharge on the road fund licence? Should the government abolish the option to ‘SORN’ vehicles? Own multiple cars? Pay for all of them, at a punitive rate? That would certainly help tackle congestion by reducing the number of cars, and improve air quality and road safety. Get rid of some of the school run traffic and improve public health as well!

The problem is, now we’ve tackled those who have more than one home and more than one car, what comes onto the radar next? Double taxation on those whose dare to save more than the government deems necessary?

It’s easy to dress this policy up as a way of tackling the housing crisis, but the properties we are talking about are not going to solve that. What’s needed is large amounts of proper social housing, in areas where there are jobs and people want to live, with affordable rents. So it’s hard not to see it as a policy of ideology / spite. Particularly as almost every MP has more than one property, but is able to expense the council tax on the second no matter how high it is. And yet, when I lived away from our main home as a necessity HMRC didn’t deem the council tax on the place I rented as an allowable expense, instead treating it as BIK’able!

House prices are high in such areas because of the demand from out-of-towners. Without relatively rich outsiders in the market, they'd be cheaper and more accessible for locals to buy.

First we need far better public transport. You're not going to get people out of their cars when the buses finish at 7pm, don't run on Sundays, or it takes 2 hours on a train for a 30 minute car journey.

Nor when councils encourage out of town retail parks and supermarkets without putting public transport options in place for people to get to them without cars.

And public transport needs to be a lot more reliable and cheaper.

You can't have the stick without the carrot. Most people aren't living in a handful of cities with good public transport and local amenities they can walk/cycle to. Most have to travel longer distances for work, shopping, leisure, etc., often with no viable alternative to cars.

The reality is it’s the minority of locals who can afford these prices! I highly doubt your in laws sold for altruistic reasons! They sold to make money and it was just fortunate that a local family could afford to buy it! I’m also guessing it wasn’ t somewhere like Cornwall!

Not true, you have to be actively marketing the property and then the premium is only deferred for a maximum 12 months.