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

No if they’re renting them out, yes if they’re air BnB or leaving it empty most of the time. Add all the couples that split with kids both needing larger homes for part of the time it’s no surprise demand is so high pushing prices up.

Give people 10% savings rates and no one would ever touch property.

Plenty of jobs in the regions, health, services, agri, SME's, not disputing that the SE is very prosperous but esp with increased military spend, there is more opportunities away from the capital.

That’s not nice.

You took the words out of MY mouth 😝

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/numberofvacantandsecondhomesenglandandwales/census2021#:~:text=Of%20the%201%2C507%2C100%20unoccupied%20dwellings,and%2014.6%25%20were%20second%20homes.

Perhaps someone cleverer than me can interpret this report as what I seem to gather from it is that much of that number is caravans/mobile homes etc but then some of the graphs seem to contradict that so am unsure

They also seem to make a distinction between empty home and second home, not sure what the difference is.

We had an empty home in the family, took 4 years to deal with an estate of someone who died and the flat was sitting there empty all that time, not sure if that would be included in the figures as it was within the estate until it sold.

A quick google comes up with various figures but maybe around a million homes are "second homes", i.e. not buy to let nor holiday lets, but second homes that people live in only for part of the year. That's huge, and it certainly IS significant.

That only works if there are jobs close to the family home. GIven the "drain" of decent jobs away from the regions and into London and a handful of other big cities, continuing to live at home is simply not possible for many.

OP has disappeared.

Wonder if she'd currently on the M5 on her way to her holiday gaff in Cornwall for Christmas?

I dont think it is a major contributory factor its a factor, but not massively significant

What is significant is more single households,, high population, lending multiples being increased, 100% mortgages and mortgages now being taken over a much longer period, unheard of when I first bought my property. Fewer options for eldery people other than to stay in their houses and the big ones - right to buy and help to buy.

People with multiple homes that are only used sporadically by them are few and far between, people with multiple homes that are being rented out to tenants are therefore providing a home, people with holiday lets again dont make up a massive portion of home owners.

I think it happened the other way round. They stay at home longer as they can’t afford a deposit, mortgage.

While not the sole upward pressure on property, and obviously there is still supply and demand, low interest rates and government money printing are what has caused massive asset inflation.

Anyone owning and asset becomes richer through inflation while those without assets have their spending power constantly reduced.

One of the reasons property has been seen as safe haven investment for years is that borrowing money against an asset was essentially free due to inflation, the value of your asset increased higher than the cost of interest you were paying. This how people who already own assets can leverage debt to buy more assets with free money, with the asset inflation compounding up and up, while people not on the ladder struggle to buy food and pay for energy. The truly richest people in the world love debt, and they have been borrowing as much as possible to aquire assets.

If you want cheaper houses, we need to change the system rather than punish the people who play it. The government needs to to stop printing money and devaluing your spending power.

Compare the cost of buying a house for gold vs government printed fiat in your bank, and see how much they have stolen from you via inflation.

Local planners can often be insane.

One of my clients bought a farm/barns to convert into a small cluster of homes but couldn't get planning permission for permanent homes as the council imposed a restriction that they couldn't be occupied as homes and could ONLY be used as second homes/holiday lets and had to be left unoccupied for x number of weeks per year! This was in an area with a desperate housing shortage for locals!

He ended up forced to rent them out as holiday lets for a couple of years whilst he went through the planning appeals process, just to get an income to pay the loan repayments etc., which took a few years and cost tens of thousands, Eventually the council changed the planning permission for them to be permanent homes, after which he sold them all to local families who actually worked/lived in the vicinity!

Heaven knows why the council planners made such a stupid decision in the first place!

Same happened with several clients who tried to get planning permission to convert derelict shops and/or derelict "flats" above shops to residential use. Again, flats etc desperately needed, but still the council planners seem incredibly reluctant to allow change of use on ex-High Streets and shopping parades, as if they think that retail will make a miraculous recovery (which it obviously won't). They'd rather have empty/derelict properties getting more and more run down and decaying rather than allow them to be redeveloped/repurposed so that people can actually have a home to live in! I can, just about understand reluctance for the actual ground floor shop units, but completely insane not to allow the flats above to be brought back into use as residential.

You have my totally sympathy, planning departments including the TP departments are so unhelpful, and often appear to be populated with ‘little Hitlers’. Their collective personality seems to be to exist for their own power and hubris, not to raise health and safety, property energy effectiveness or to regenerate areas and return empty propriety to the housing supply in a country that is buckling under the strain of not having enough.
I love trees, but if a tree is growing in the wrong place on a road, and causing problems it is removed without a murmur. In gardens, on boundaries or too close to existing buildings, trees also grow exponentially and cause problems, do TPO departments listen with common sense and empathy - hardly ever with a suitable management plan.
Added to this in our area, a planning officer visited gardens and slapped additional orders on trees that the owners had planted themselves, without enough arbourtorial knowledge to stop them planting too close to their houses! Cue 40 years or so and the planning orders stop new buyers from taking them on…who would knowingly buy such gardens/properties knowing how imposable the problems (damp, daylight, root damage etc) and cost will be.
They become impossible to sell…

Not all holiday homes are let out. I live in the Cotswolds, far too many second homes here, lots only occupied maybe at the weekend (not every), or bank holidays, a couple of weeks in the summer etc.. Londoners usually who need their “little Cotswold bolt hole”. 🙄

YANBU.

Far too many "second homes" that are only occupied a few weeks per year.
Far too many "holiday lets" let out only 30-40 weeks per year.
Far too many "normal" homes let as student lots, only let out 30-40 weeks per year.
Far too many "empty" homes where owners are dragging their feet waiting to renovate or just dragging their feet through probate or waiting for the market to improve.

Exactly this. Ultimately we have more people wanting homes than we have homes available. This pushes up prices and rents.

It's easy to pretend that we could just build a load of houses but it's actually really difficult. The idea that the state has enough money to kick off some major social housing building scheme is laughable. They need private investors to fund the bulk of house building now and this will inevitably involve some element of profit

This!!!! 100%!!!!

The general opinion is that owner occupiers are quite price sensitive - understandably so.

The suggestion is however that 'non owner occupiers' are less so as in most cases somebody else - tenants AirBnB guests etc are paying the mortgage & while you can get out of the second home/BTL/Whatever market quite easily unless you are leaving the country for good you will need somewhere to live

Lots of people don't let their 'holiday home' out. Our neighbours have one in Cornwall and don't.

Of course you're right OP, Salcombe in Devon is the most expensive seaside town in Britain with properties costing more than 1,2 mil on average. The place is dead in winter.

The other big problem is people selling up in London for huge amounts and moving to the countryside where jobs aren't nearly so well paid and those houses have then become unaffordable to locals.

@Fifiesta Definitely make common sense planning easier.. I bought an unlisted house that had been on the market for years. Part of it was letting water in, electrics swamped, partly diy built wood and rotted through. Plus rats.
All I wanted was to pull down rotted, wet, leaking 1950s lean-to, and replace it with brick &slate build, of the same dimensions & footprint, not visible from the road.
It would

• make it safe, remove fire risk
• get rid of rats
• restore habitable dry accommodation
• improve EPC rating from g to c
• match materials of the original house

It took two years battling local planning dept. They argued every point, even down to the nationality of the slate on the roof. 🙄 Why?

I have now restored the house to part of our national housing supply. It is a warm dry safe home, but God, they made it hard work.

Of course it is a part of the problem.

The whole buy to let concept changed the market.

Instead of supply meating with a real demand (people who would want to live there) and establishing a price point, additional party stepped into the middle treating it as an investment and hoping for price increase.
The whole system is propelled by price growth.

Small LL's doing gov't job of housing people and getting penalised for it. Now, royally screwed.

But also not helped by buyers paying far too much for a property and failing to research previous sold prices. As a buyer the EA is not your friend!

Hahahaha. Was going to be my exact comment. Greedy revolting 'professional landlords' particularly student landords.
My daughter lives in a 6 bed house in an affluent university city. Each one of them pays over 10k a year and the bastard landlord (outright owning several more) wants them out before the rent act goes through so he can charge a new lot more. Absolute cunt.
A) taking family homes away from families b) by association, making HE even more inaccessible for poorer students.