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.

Sorry that was to @RunningSME

I live in an area where there are 2nd homes and Airbnb's. Councils could use mobile homes

I live where 2nd homes and Airbnb's are an issue as is the increase in the cost of house prices. Temporary mobile sites might be a short term option here. A rented house opposite mine was sold last year for £215k and is back on the market at £325k having been renovated.

If you look at the income Airbnb's generate for very little work you can see why LL no longer rent. At 5% on £325k you're talking about rent of over £16,000. I'm not talking about a fancy home either.

This 100%
Thatcher brought in the Right to Buy and the UK lost a devastating amount of council homes that we supposed to be rebuilt but never were. We’d need to be careful penalising private rental landlords too much until the council housing stock was suitably replenished, as we’ll lose even more rental properties for those that can’t afford to buy - the situation is dire where I live, so many people desperate for rental homes with 20-30 applicants per property.

@Namenic that's as maybe but we are talking about the UK.

Your point being ?

I thought it was a well known tactic to shut down debate by pointing to somewhere else and say "Look ! They have it worse/better* than us. Now shut up.". Nothing I've seen in the past few weeks, months or years suggests that has changed.

*delete as applicable.

I’m saying there is room to build more housing if people want to. In some places it’s more common to live in flats with shared gardens.

Haven’t RTFT, but just wanted to say that I think that certain types of private rentals would need to be exempted from penalties, for example, student housing near HE institutions. Right now, universities can’t provide accommodation for all students and the students definitely don’t want to buy or stay longterm-but they need to live somewhere for a couple of years.

Perhaps landlords could be incentivized to sell their rentals to universities specifically for student housing?

I don’t know how practical that would be, it’s just one area of the rental market that would need to be handled carefully.

I fully agree with you. However immigrants have to live somewhere and they can only live in the properties we have available.

Other countries which are more densely populated than ours have planned their housing systems better than us.

As someone has said the government have effectively outsourced the rental market.

Landlords can be penalised as much as people but councils will not be building any/many affordable rentals.

As I stated in my previous post. The UK are encouraging people from India and some African nations to help plug the nursing/care staff we lost after Brexit/Covid.

However, new arrivals are not able to pass the credit checks/ provide guarantors that a lot of LL require so they're finding it hard to rent property.

It's all a huge mess and demand hugely outstrips supply. I have 2 recently vacated properties and on both have received over 70 enquiries within a few days.

Did anyone see this

Oops posted to soon. Did anyone see this in Dublin recently?

Picture is a queue of people waiting to view a 1 bed rental flat.

I think you have a good point on the rising numbers of people creating demand and the supply of housing being quite low despite that. Ultimately the answer lies a lot further back when the UK decided to stop making as much council operated housing as the rest of the EU back in the 70s and 80s.
We are rushing to catch up with 40 or 50 years of housing that should have been built and never was! While immigration might be causing a higher demand on that, I would also suggest that cultural changes such as living alone, divorce rates, knee-jerk infrastructure projects and poor planning to all this passed like a baton between a warring two-party state combined with a very cushy low-interest rate period of 15 years has made us all wake up.

Point 2: I really, really wouldn't tax rental profits at 40%. If you did that, then there would be a problem where landlords would be forced to sell up because of rising interest rates and not enough margin. You then have a rental housing stock shortage which will inturn drive up those who do choose to keep their properties rented out...at extortionately high prices.
Additionally because of the low housing stock on the rental market you can expect the quality of those homes to be lower as people will be expected to shoulder more burden or simply leave. In the mean time, where do people who have been kicked out live if they cannot afford to pay more for rent?

Point 5: If Point 2 exists in the same timeframe, I wouldn't sell up at all. I would convert to a multi residential letting opportunity and charge about £2k/unit/month.

Point 1: While doing renovations to my amazing second home to turn it into a multi-rent opportunity, I'd take it off the market. Once ready, I'd wait to value it based on an estate agent telling me when the best time to value is because of the new law of 2% rises and Point 2. Estate agents will hate this law too because valuing a property generates more commission for them, so they will be incentivised to help landlords maximise rates in the long-term.

Point 6: I'd lawfully offer my now extremely highly valued rental market property via an estate agent to my tenant at the inflated market rate, asking them to pay a huge sum of money to me (if they buy it, I walk away with a premium, if not I'll charge the next tenants who are desperate to live there because of Point 5.

Point 4: Negligible. Council Tax is nothing compared to interest on a mortgage and the 2% rent rise will cover that eventually.

I agree with Point 3, though :) Great mini-budget really enjoyed it :)

I'd only allow 1 buy to let mortgage at a time, some BTL landlords build a financial house of cards by having multiple mortgages at the same time.
2, Slowly reduce housing benefit to an equal national amount (I'd say £400 PM). At the moment the Government is skewing the system by paying more for less in some areas. If they will pay over £2000 a month to a private landlord in HB it makes it a very attractive investment, if you remove that taxpayer money subsidy then you will remove a lot of bad landlords from the system.
3, Allow councils to borrow money to build/buy properties for the sole purpose of social housing.
4, Get rid of right to buy, Social housing should be kept as an asset for the council, tenants should use the time they have there on below market rates to save for a deposit if they wish to buy a house.
5, Stop basing the health of our economy on the value of property. If you buy a house to live in it doesn't matter if it goes into negative equity because you still have an asset at the end of it. If you buy a property to make profit then it's tough shit if you lose money because you chose that route and like bitcoin or stocks and shares you chose to take that risk.

the problem is the sector needs private landlords. Their is not enough housing stock. A lot of landlords are selling up. I agree however that restrictions should be put on air b & b however, particularly in tourist areas

There should be rules about houses left empty- leave a property empty for 2 yrs and get forced to sell

Forcing landlords to sell doesn't increase the housing stock. It just changes who owns them.

• There are the same number of houses.
• The difference is most will be owned by large corporations instead of small landlords.
• Student housing is already going this way
• Some people may be able to buy if landlords sell and prices crash - but it depends on the banks who lend the money
• The small landlords now have to find somewhere else to invest their money, (stocks? Bitcoin? banks? somewhere fluffy)
• The people who can't and don't want to buy are stuffed as rentals will be in short supply.
• Immigration is a factor, (how can it not be?), but cannot be discussed
• Once you do buy you are trapped as moving costs a fortune in tax alone. (That's why people rarely downsize)
• If the govt want to suddenly impose a 20% tax on owned property, it's relatively easy - you have a captive population.

However the narrative that all landlords are evil and greedy and all tenants are deserving people who only really want to own is hard to shake.

People have their views however and we have to hope that the actual decisions are made by those who have really looked into things rather than those, (including myself) who are merely drawing conclusions from our limited observations