Housing Crisis solutions

[Aslockton]

I watched the Tonight programme last night which seemed to suggest the rise of 2nd home owners and airbnb is causing the lack of housing.

What's the solution? If I were in change...

1. Prevent Landlords increasing rents by more that 2% a year (straight away)
2. Tax all rental profits at 40% (starting next year)
3. Rise stamp duty on non-primary residence purchases to 20% (straight away)
4. Double council tax on 2nd homes and airbnb (straight away)
5. Waive capital gains tax on all second property sales for 2 years. (This will encourage 2nd home owners and landlords to sell up)
6. Make it law that tenants have to be offered the home first (if landlords sell) and the price will be determined by an independent adjudicator (like lease sales are).

Are these ideas unreasonable/ bonkers or both!!
If I had a second home, I would be tempted to sell up.

Drive through Middlesbrough and Hartlepool and you see endless sprawl of new housing estates. I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re all built on green fields despite both towns having huge swathes of brownfield sites and none are built with any new infrastructure (schools, doctors, shops etc). And worst of all, there is absolutely no public transport. People are ending up further and further from town centres and the services that they need any everyone has no choice but to drive everywhere. Pollution from road traffic is now the single biggest contributor to global warming. Our government, sadly, does not care and is in the pockets of the housing developers.

Same with areas around Newcastle. However I would suggest that the green fields there are not the most exciting and probably OK to build on given that we need so many more houses.

I also think there are a large number of high streets and shopping centres that are slowly dying a death and these are ripe for redevelopment for housing with amenities, supermarket, leisure and a few smaller shops. There's one near me which is currently has a planning application going through for a massive redevelopment. The resistance to it is huge but I think it's a great idea in principle - the height needs to come down and the affordable housing requirement needs to be switched to social housing and the percentage increased but it's the right idea in my opinion.

I disagree with PP that developers have a requirement for social housing. Round here they have a requirement for affordable housing which is not the same at all especially when they have very funny ideas about what affordable means.

I also think mortgages on second homes or buy to let should be banned. People can only buy a second home if they can afford it outright. Might need some thinking through the implications of that one but certainly some mechanism to disincentivise borrowing for a second home.

Not land they want to build on though, exactly. And they won't build anywhere that doesn't maximise their profits. Councils don't care either. Farmers are selling off land to build on. A lot of equestrian venues are being sold to build on. Pretty areas obviously. And they won't venture from that, and people won't buy from non pretty sites either. So where do we build? Just keep ruining every pretty site until all towns and cities interlink? It's getting that way already..

@ILikeHotWaterBottles thats a developers arguement. Planning authorities should be string enough to insist that developments are either what is needed where is needed or don't happen at all. And council's themselves should be allowed and financed to build social housing - maybe using all the money raised by council house sell offs.

Our housing sector is suffering from many years of free market economy and Tory ideology. But there is no shortage of suitable housing land (and with increases flooding I think houses on hills will get more and more popular).

@HappyChloé2 thanks for your patronising response, I have zero chance of ever owning a house so you don't need to worry.

With the huge rise in WFH some of the empty office building could be converted into flats.

They won't though, again that's the problem. Councils don't give a damn, they want their back handed money from these companies. Our council 'lost' 400k, wonder where that came from and went? They do build social housing too, but not a lot and then there's the housing labelled as 'affordable'. Average salary here is 25k, even with 2 salaries you've got a max budget of 200k. All 'affordable' housing starts higher than that.

People don't want to live on hills either. You need cars to get there, some of them don't drive or find it too scary to drive there, they don't put on public transport either (I live in one of the hilly regions, you either drive or you're screwed) and it's far from everything. Most people want local facilities, good public transport and easy roads. None of which councils are doing, or at least most aren't. We just got our public transport reduced, despite them claiming in all new developments there is loads.

1. Increase stock of social housing to give security to the most vulnerable.

1. Punitive taxes on empty properties.

1. Covenants on new builds/new housing developments in tourist/second home saturated areas (Cornwall, Lake District) that restrict use to full time residential occupancy only.

The private rental market has a place in the housing market, people will always want to rent for various reasons but agree rents should be more affordable.

Population increase has not driven up demand as much as societal changes, i.e. the massive increase in single parent families and single occupancy homes.

Don't know how my 1 turned into a • 🤷🏻‍♀️

This!

If anything the solution is to make long term rentals more strictly regulated and secure, but also more worthwhile for landlords. So actually cut tax on profits, but put in caps on rental increases, make leases longer, have stricter rules on maintenance, etc. So rentals have to be secure and to a high standard, but in return it's more worthwhile for landlords.

Agreed that holiday homes should be taxed, capped per area, and let out for a minimum numbers of weeks a year.

"Prevent LL increasing rent by more than 2% per year"

My estate agency has recommended an increase of 5% per year. They obviously wanted their cut of the increases. I just said no & they agreed to no increases. However, not everyone can withhold the increases due to the rising costs.

It is not easy being a LL & it comes with responsibilities.

On MN it is an easy discussion to dislike LL, but you have no idea about individuals circumstances

If you think that the right comparison is the rent versus the mortgage and don’t understand the nature of the lender’s risk then maybe you aren’t really ready to take on the responsibility of owning a house
Indeed, the lack of understanding of what being a landlord entails goes a long way explaining why they are hated so much. 1-2 % above cost of mortgage....let's see.

What I have to pay for the privilege of being a landlord:

• 40% of the rental income going to the tax man.
• insurance, gas certificate, electric certificate, EPC.
• repairs, including garden maintenance (tree cutting)
• agency fee when looking for new tenants
• new carpets every 5 years or so
• new kitchen/bathroom every 8-10 years
• new boiler every 10 years or so
• new painting every 5-7 years
• significant repairs, roof etc...every 20-30 years.
• savings for potential loss of rent, going to court

If anyone think that this is covered by £70-140 a month, then they are very naive or ignorant!

Yes.
I'd also bring in a law that states, that tenants must keep a property perfectly clean at ALL times. Any damage to the property fixtures or fittings will be charged back to the tenant at a cost of £10,000.
🙄

Selling off arable/farmland for housing is ridiculous and will bring its own problems for us later on.

The answer to the housing crisis is more social housing.

I would vote for you, OP @Aslockton

I think you are correct - housing isn't being created quick enough to cope with the influx. So why the OP would want to deter potential LLs from entering the market and existing ones to leave is beyond me.

Also, if your rent is covered by Housing Benefit, it does not get increased if the LL puts the rent up.

I wholeheartedly agree with you about societal change however I disagree with you about population increase.

I'm a landlord and I have seen first hand how immigration affects rental housing. Our population has risen by 7 million since 2005. These people need somewhere to live and basic supply and demand is at play here. Unfortunately we can't have huge population growth and cheap housing.

I became a landlord around 2005. Most of my tenants have been from Eastern Europe and they've been great tenants.

I've recently had two properties vacated and most people applying are recent immigrants from India and Nigeria. Most of the Nigerians are doing care work and the Indian people have full time jobs plus Deliveroo/Just Eat etc.

Rental increases have been insane and even I'm astounded at the going rate in some areas.

So why don't I charge below market rate. I've done this. Turns out the person renting it sub- let it out as an Air B N B. Luckily enough my neighbours informed me. That's what happens if the rent is too cheap. It will be subletted out.

It's a vicious circle. Immigration has been great for me financially, my dad was an immigrant, but not so great for the indigenous population of the UK. Especially single parents with children relying on UC/ people on low income.

New entrants to the UK are working 2 - 3 jobs to pack the money in however this is not possible for single parents with children. These sadly are the ones being left behind in the rental market.

So why don't I rent to people on UC? I have many, many times and sadly each and every time they've left the property in a state with outstanding rent. I've been burned too many times now.

This is my first hand experience of the rental market in the south east since 2005.

It's really not that simple. It's not just housing we need, we need all the infrastructure to go with it including GPs and hospitals. As others have said, it's not a housing problem. It's an immigration problem.

I agree I rented to a single parent, I’ve took photograph of the bedroom in the condition of the place and I was very tempted to send it to social services she clearly could not cope living alone. Awful as it is it’s just not my problem, she should’ve been in some sort of supported living program.

Habitation laws which specify that properties must be lived in or rented out within 18months of purchase or pay a high financial penalty.

tiny houses on little developments made from shipping containers / prefabs or whatnot for young singles . They are small enough to be run on independent renewable sources and the all inclusive, low price to rent should allow for savings to buy a proper flat or house when they want to start a family.

yes to extra council tax on air B&B rentals but a discount or some sort of incentive to landlords who rent long term at a fair rate.
cute, comfortable little bungalows near their families for the elderly that tempt them out of family homes in the social housing sector.

Build more social housing.

Not popular I know, but more social housing is the only easy answer I can think of. It's how we got rid of slum landlords in the past, so that there were 3 valid options for people, social housing, good rental accommodation, and ownership.

Oh great, you mean on someones place of residence or do you mean a 2nd home

Hopefully the latter

Corrupt Government with fingers in the corrupt housing develepor's pies.
Limited space as it is in the relatively tiny UK.

Demographic collapse is imminent as the boomers go into retirement and the working-age population is not ample enough to replace them. Immigrants needed but the infrastucture to accommodate them just isn't there.

Quality of life is set to seriously decline over the next decade in most countries globally - and the UK is one of them.

My family is made up of 5 and we live in a tiny 2 bed. I'm preparing for life to get much, much worse.

Also, end nimby preciousness about the Greenbelt
Yes, it WILL affect me. Still the right thing to do, always provided that infrastructure is in place and legally enforced