To think people who own multiple homes have helped drive house prices out of reach?

Because many second homes are around the coast, they are in rural areas, most immigrants/young people looking for work want a flat in the city, and certainly in London anyway there is an oversupply of basic shoe-box flats.

A very small number of people can actually fund (without mortgage debt) second or multiple homes and afford to pay the taxes to keep them empty, most people were just leveraging up on existing property/mortgage debt to attain a "lifestyle", unless they have paid a lot of the mortgage debt back their positions will unwind quite quickly if rates go up.

The basic causes of housing unaffordability were mass immigration and too much cheap mortgage debt for too long, blaming "second homes" is just a media distraction on behalf of the banks who have tried to pretend for years that high house prices are somehow "normal" (much harder to put that lie over now though)

They wanted to blow the property bubble as hard as they could.

Labour had THIRTEEN YEARS in which to repeal or amend that law, but they didn’t. Why was that, I wonder? Could it possibly be because they thought it’d lose them votes?

Ok then that's good isn't it? I don't see how it wouldn't impact the rental market though.

Nobody should be allowed to own more than one house and that house should only be allowed to be as big as required, one bedroom per occupant.

That is a tiny minority of people and nothing to do with affordable rentals, most people will be facing double council tax on empty property now, and probably a new tax or two under AB as PM, they will be forced to sell or get them occupied.

I don't agree with people who have so many properties they can afford to leave one or more of them empty the majority of the time. While others struggle desperately to find affordable rentals. I think social housing should be massively increased.

I think a lot of the problems with housing and also amount of benefits being paid is due to relationships breaking down. I don’t think that’s a bad thing but it’s a price we pay.

It was a globally co-ordinated cheap debt experiment, designed to cover lack of wage rises and boost bank lending (and banker"s bonus pots) the public fell for it hook line and sinker - Why just have one mortgage when you can have three or four and rent out to students and immigrants! You are going to be a Big Player Mr and Mrs Blackpool bedsit "owner"!

It is stopping, AB as new PM, ME escalation, Japan "carry trade" etc. are all piling pressure on future mortgage costs, immigration drops will put pressure on BTL and the eventual recession will put a damper on all that lovely AirBnB that ruins residents peaceful enjoyment of their home.

It was a Labour government - Blair and Brown - who thought it’d be a good idea to allow mortgage tax relief for buy to let, while abolishing it for owner occupiers. So that kicked off the buy to let boom with a vengeance.

Presumably they reasoned that a huge increase in private rentals would remove the need for them to provide more social housing - to replace that which had been lost to right-to-buy.

However the surge in house prices can’t have been just down to this - many other countries inc. Australia have experienced much the same.

God yes this!

Of course they have! That’s never been in doubt!

Homes under the Hammer… people from London, buying cheap properties in areas of deprivation, that they can rent out, to pay for their large London mortgage.

The rent is more than local people would pay for a mortgage.

Driving up prices in the deprived areas

i feel like putting my foot through the screen when I hear “property portfolio”

This needs to stop.

People were mainly getting help with deposits I think, higher monthly interest on mortgage debt won"t be able to be subsidised by most parents.

Why is it ridiculous @GotALionInMyPocket?Houses will be priced as high as the market can bear, many first time buyers can only afford the current prices because they are being subsidised by their parents. If there were fewer people able to buy at these prices, the market would drop. Seems logical to me?

More relevant than ever as AB gears up to tax property until the pips squeak.

Don’t be ridiculous

Why did you resurrect a zombie? There is a message when you do it. Was that not a clue?

Stopped a long time ago, property is now a tax target, not a store of wealth.

The biggest thing is foreign buyers buying up swathes of properties. Needs to be stopped.

The good news is that as holiday homes/BTL/second home owners try to sell up due to legislation, lack of tenants, price of mortgage debt etc, they will cause prices to come down, that is a net good for everyone in society.

How many threads do you intend to start on this topic?

Lol !

IMO it’d be a start if we stopped foreigners who don’t actually live in the U.K., from buying properties. In London and I dare say elsewhere, there are many thousands of flats bought by Chinese or others from the Far East, , who don’t even rent them out, let alone live in them. The properties are simply a safe, convenient place to park their money.

We should take a leaf out of Denmark’s book. No foreigners allowed to buy unless they’ve actually lived there, full time, for 5 years. Apparently this was because of the proximity to Germany and Denmark’s extensive coastline - it was reasoned that without restrictions, Germans would buy up a great deal of Danish property and thus push prices up.

But they couldn’t say ‘no Germans’ (against EU law) so they said ‘no foreigners’ instead.

Dh was told this by a Dane he met at one of his professional society conferences.