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

And not everyone wants to own anyway. There are a lot of people who move to be with their partners or closer to work. Then when they're ready to settle and/or have saved up enough, they can put a deposit down for a house.

Rentals are sorely needed, as much as freeholds are. A lot of people see the homeowner, get jealous and then want all property owners to hand over their properties to increase the available housing stock and then push private landlords out to make way for the government to be the landlord.

Not everyone can get a mortgage. It isn't just about cost. It's about having cash for a deposit and being credit worthy.

Rental homes are needed. Yes, most of the rental homes available should be social housing. But they're not. So private rental is needed to fill the gap.

I don't like the system (selling off of council houses etc) but it's the one we're stuck with. Private rentals are needed.

Yes people are living longer in smaller households.
But the population was around 60 million in 2005 and is approaching 70 million now.
thats a huge increase and latest projections show a possible 80 million within 20-30 years.

The tone you use when you talk about older people here isn't very nice.

The problem is supply and demand and the supply side is always looked at, never the demand. We keep building houses without improving infrastructure, we just splice off existing infrastructure, putting more pressure on the system. The people who own multiple properties are so tiny in number that it's not worth scrutinising.

We're an overpopulated country, with thousands still coming in and expecting to buy a house. Demand pushes prices up.

Less people means less demand, but that's not something anyone wants to address, because we're open to the world.

The biggest issue in our area is people relocating to the area. It is often Londoners with large budgets who price out the locals. It’s been a total pain in the arse since Covid and I can’t see it improving. We have been actively looking to move since 2022!

That’s an admirably simple solution — just legislate people’s spare rooms out of existence.

The difficulty is deciding who gets to define ‘need.’

Children grow up, parents age, people work from home, families change, illness happens, guests exist. Life has an annoying habit of not fitting neatly into a bedroom-to-human ratio approved by strangers.

As for banning multiple homes, that sounds satisfyingly tough until you remember it would also catch carers, separated families, rural workers, people relocating for jobs, and anyone renting out a former home because selling would bankrupt them.

Housing policy is genuinely broken, yes.

But turning square footage into a moral crime mostly feels like a way to vent frustration at the wrong target.

The problem isn’t that someone, somewhere, has a spare bedroom.

It’s that the system can’t build enough homes — and pretending otherwise just keeps us arguing about curtains instead of foundations.

When a housing crisis makes us want to criminalise spare bedrooms instead of fixing supply, planning, and investment, that’s not policy — it’s just envy dressed up as virtue.

I like my spare rooms as well. DGC often has a sleep over so their parents can have a night off and has their room set up for them. They are all coming for Christmas so I'll have a full house DD often stays over with DGC if she has an early dentist appointment as it's just up the road from us and she doesn't want to dash across town in the morning rush

DH uses one room as an office

So sorry no I'm not going to down size - just yet but will do in the future but the set up suits us

Edited for typo and to say a lot of people work from home now so all these spare rooms are set up as offices

Don your tin hat.

@taxguru. I like my spare rooms, means the kids and their dps can stay, one bedroom is used as an office mostly, 2 are spare rooms. We own our house outright

But some people need rent, there’s a shortage of properties. If you can’t have rental properties how can you move cities for work, be housed as a university student or get a short term rental during divorce proceedings? You need a assured shorthold tenancy market for flexibility

Oh I'm all for incentives for people to move to smaller properties but the poster I originally quoted said it should be illegal to occupy a property with more bedrooms than you need. That's a crazy idea.

There are lots of families living in homes too small for them!

Such under-occupiers could be "nudged" to sell, such as removing the single occupancy council tax discount for 3+ bedroom homes. And incentives such as no stamp duty for down scaling.

Who are you going to blame once the Boomers are dead?

I think it’s more that people used to live as families and now families break down more often so one family in years gone by are now occupying two houses.

Oh don't be ridiculous.

Yes, I rent a flat on much the same basis. The flat is properly managed by an agent and there has only been one very small rent increase since 2012. My tenant has been there for some years, he's elderly, so doesn't want the responsibility of owning a property, and is very happy there.
Sadly the flat is in a listed building and I can't meet the current letting standards for insulation as the council won't allow changes, so I'll probably have to sell the flat when he leaves, if not before.

All housing should be nationalised and allocated based on need.

The issue about property in the UK is that it is 'undertaxed' with the Sultan of Brunei paying as much for his multi million pound palace in London as a 3 bed in Burnley.

If we had a tax that reflected the value and no single occupier exemption plus of course all the inheritance tax exemptions then it would be less attractive to sit on a hiuse you were no longer making full use of.

So what do you propose? That people are forced to sell these big houses against their will? And where are they expected to live afterwards? There sure as hell aren't enough suitable smaller houses for them to move into.

The problem is that everyone likes to blame the little man who has inherited a second property or has invested in a BTL for retirement.

Rather than looking at the off shore conglomerates and faceless big businesses who own most of the property in this country.

I only have one property by the way.

When Thatcher implement Right to Buy, the council housing sold was being replaced with new build council housing. The housing stock sold often needed significant investment to remain habitable, so the scheme had widespread support with taxpayers and councils who could see the value of offloading the old housing stock to the people who lived in the houses at a good price, as they would be liable for repair costs and would take pride in improving their built environment. It didn’t always work, but the idea was seen as sustainable and cost effective. At the time, house prices were much lower relative to earnings and many lost value in the early 1990s recession. The problems was two fold: house prices boomed in the late 90s and council house building ground almost to a halt.

But that home is being rented out. So one side has an investment and the other side has a home. So no, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. We will be doing the same.

That's part of it too, and this has been fuelled by the rise of duel income families.

Up to WW2 the average house was 3 times the average salary and had been for 600 years.

But it's also we have a much bigger population that lives longer, and not enough houses in the areas where there is work. More houses (apart from doing the basic job of housing people) will allow the market to drop.

We also need more social housing of course.

Partly.

Mainly we aren't building enough - like nowhere near enough - affordable first home and family homes, in the right areas (ie where there is work and transport available).

This is because our green belt legislation needs an update and developers need to be stopped from manipulating prices by holding onto land, and (I'm guessing) there also needs to be more transparency on the relationship between local authorities and developers to make sure there isn't corruption there.

I do think second homes are an issue in some areas - London is full of new build tower blocks that are basically bank safety deposit boxes in the sky - ie owned by foreign nationals to give them a base in Britain for Finance reasons. Also areas like Cornwall where holiday homes are really popular. So I think we do need legislation to sort that out. But overall it's a lack of building.