To ask who the hell owns all the..

[OftenHangry]

... empty properties?

There is over 200 000 empty properties in England only.
200 000!
There is a housing crisis yet lots of people leave houses to rot and instead new ones have to be built (and they are much dearer to buy).

There is a house near mine which I suspect is empty, so I checked google and this number came up. 200 000....

Gobsmacked. Why would someone just let a house sit empty?

As I said ... I've seen new builds ... and I'm not a builder.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46454844

Hundreds of new properties have been built using weak mortar that does not meet recommended industry standards, the Victoria Derbyshire show has found.

There are reports of homes with the fault on at least 13 estates in the UK.

(contd)

as PP said, 4 years is nothing, I'd expect a decent house to stand for at least a century.

I agree that stamp duty is not the best system of property tax some sort of land value tax would be better

I'm more bothered about the number of elderly people in their 60s/70s/80s living as 2 people or even just 1 person in houses intended for families

Both my IL and DP looked into downsizing and there wasn't a lot of great options - not enough to justify the upheaval and expense and past a certain age they went off entire idea of moving.

In fact down most of their streets and one where we bought our first house it’s mainly one or two people in three and occasionally four bed houses.

Now they are retired they tend to spend more time in the home than ever before. When we sold our 3 bed family sized house to a couple looking ahead to retirement it was the downstairs space they were after thought the bedroom would be useful for visiting family.

As people get older, moving house becomes more difficult. My MIL wanted to move into a 1 bedroom place, but my FIL who gets very anxious at any change (although in good physical health), does not. I think if someone could pack everything up, take it to a new place and unpack it - he might do it. They are in a small 3 bedroom council house, and do not have the money to pay someone to do this. My FIL won't even have people in who will decorate for free - they are entitled to this, as he can't cope with the change. So they pay more rent than they need to as a result.

And I know a number of young people with money who live as a single person in 3 or 4 bedroomed houses. But because they are young no one ever seems to think this is wrong.

I don't know why people lead less space as they get older. I have a home office - I work from home until I die, I need an extra separate large storage room for confidential papers. I have a room where I have meetings which is quite rare these days but my father worked full timer to 77 as a doctor in part working from home and he definitely needed in his 70s storage space for files (their 3rd story), his home office, his patient waiting room, his cloakroom for patients and my parents had separate bed rooms so that was 2 of hte 4 used up for that and then with 11 descendants (children and grandchildren who lived hundreds of miles away) coming to stay fairly regularly I don't think having 2 spare bed rooms was excessive when they worked full time for 10 years and put off children for 10 years after marrying just to afford that house. Other people their age did not get a 4 bed house for all kinds of reasons but including that they weren't prepared to delay children until they were older and whilst both worked full time. Why can't they keep the fruits of their labours? We live under a capitalist system which works better than other systems that have been tried. If you were in a socialist state it would own all the land and allocate properties to those in need (or more likely to those who bribed the leader the most).

I don't know why people lead less space as they get older.

Arguably more. Scooters and wheelchairs take up quite a bit of space. (And obvious need level access to the street).

How about we pick on childfree couples ?

Why can't they keep the fruits of their labours?

Because no one is self made we all depend on public resources in order for our labours to bear fruit

the increase in the value of property is not the fruit of the Labour of the owner of the property, any person who owns a business can only run that business because of publicly owned infrastructure, the rule of law, the roads, the police force, the schools that educate the people that work for you etc etc we are all interdependent.

We all benefit hugely from the work of other people, the wealthy are just those who have been able to position themselves in such a way that they get a greater share of the fruit

I am not advocating socialism or communism I'm arguing for better redistribution of wealth and aknowledgement of who really adds value to society

So what would you confiscate Wordthe - just housing in say London or would you exgtend it to areas with loads of space like Northumberland?
Would you decide it by swuare foot - that no one even a 25 year old is allowed to live in a house which exceeds the Government's square foot maximum per person or would you only apply it to old people not single people of 30 with a large house or 2 flats?

Confiscate?
I don't understand, when we did we start talking about confiscating things I certainly didn't?

It sounds l cutting stamp duty for older people looking to downsize would help incentivise it.

I also don't think the issue is so much that older people are living in big houses as that there's a shortage of housing in general so young people can't afford to buy a big house themselves as it costs so many more salary multiples than it did 40 (or even 20) years ago (I know interest rates were higher then). So families are squeezing into small flats whilst their parents have multiple spare rooms.

now it is 12% or 15% at the upper tier in England on houses that are priced at much higher levels too. No wonder people don't move
you have profited massively from a process which has been destructive to society as a whole, (ie the property bubble) and now you're complaining about having to pay the tax which is due on the profits which you did nothing to earn

It is true that young people can't afford to buy houses

this isn't because there is a shortage

the causes are
Over supply of cheap credit
policies which encouraged people to park their money in property (foreign investors buying a flat in London leaving them empty, to buy to let landlords etc)

These have pushed the price of property up to an affordable and unsustainable levels

Wordthe I think the issue was raised to show the disincentive to sell a large home and move to a smaller flat of similar value. The potential losses incurred incentivises people to stay put.

Then for many people it can take quite a bit of willpower to decide to move later in life anyway.

Some of them might be that the buyer can't sell. DH inherited his dad's flat about 17 years ago and has been renting it out since then. This he wanted to sell it and it's been on the market for at least six months with little interest from buyers.

That should be 'seller can't sell'.

Wrodw e have not all profited massively. we sold our house at a loss in the 90s and 2 buy to let flats. I have still not been able to set the loss o n the flats against any capital gains as not made any. On my current house even if we deducted the losses from that I do nto have a gain as I had to pay my hsuband a lot of the equity and it is still not worth what it was assessed as being worth in around 2003 so I think every penny of equity in it has been taxed at at kleast 40%. So how you disinguish those who benefits from price rises above inflation and those who didn't?

I agree no one talked about confiscation but how otherwise would you make sure someone did not have a home they bought themselves that the staet decided was "too big for them".

If sellers can't sell then they're probably asking too much. Lower the price enough and someone will buy it (unless it's really uninhabitable, but if properties gave been rented out they can't be that bad). As I said before there are two flats on my street up for around 100k each which haven't sold despite being up for sale for over 6 months. The last flat like that to sell went for 70k within weeks if being listed about 4 years ago. If they even dropped the price to 80k I bet they'd sell in a flash.

If sellers can't sell then they're probably asking too much. Lower the price enough and someone will buy it

It's really common on MN to say this but we are talking about empty houses i.e. they aren't necessarily inhabitable.

And rented houses can be hard to sell too - if they have a very short lease, are in very poor condition, or the tenants have proved difficult and would be hard to move out, landlords will not be that interested in buying.

Some areas just are hard to sell in, as well. If there are no jobs nobody wants to live there.

Proof (if it were needed) that MN seems to drive the debate

Now, by dint of paying attention as I'v grown up, I am going to make a prediction here that might - just might - get me burned as a witch when it comes true, and (some) people gasp and say "how could you have possibly known that ?"

This measure is actually going to increase the prices of existing properties even more than at present, as the supply of 2nd-homes dries up. Therefore meaning even fewer people will be able to afford them.

(An excellent illustration of why sometimes, we need national policies).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-46458864/mevagissey-tourist-town-ban-on-new-build-second-homes

Mevagissey: Tourist town ban on new-build second homes

Some residents in a Cornish town cannot afford to buy a home there, while dozens of the properties stand empty for months outside the holiday period.

People who grew up in Mevagissey, and want to get on the property ladder, welcome a ban on new properties being bought as second homes, but not everyone agrees with the restriction.

in that clip the guy says that stopping people investing in Mevagissey is a bad thing
but the second home buyers are not investing in the community, they are just parking money in second homes and thereby pushing up the prices and destroying the community

in destroying the community they are destroying the value of their investment vehicle (ie the second home)

So yes the community needs investment, but it needs the right kind of investment, something which adds actual value to the community

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.lovemoney.com/galleries/amp/72713/the-uks-50-biggest-landowners-revealed

Those surveys are rather confusing however. You could buy about 500 acres of Northumberland suitable only for sheep for the price of a London house. - Here is 600 acres for £800k. So it all rather depends where the land is and what you can do with it.

If you say property cannot be empty foreign (and UK) owners would just stick someone in it for £13k a year to fulfil the criteria surely as some kind of house sitter person.