Second Home owners doing sad faces in the press about council tax increase

[CornishTickler]

Just read an article online about the second home council tax increase and there are couples with sad faces saying it was without warning and is against their human rights! It wasn't, its been in the press and talked about by councils for over a year. It wasn't a surprise, areas with high levels of second homes knew it was coming.

I for one am glad about the tax. Our village has been destroyed by second home owners for years. A lot are badly maintained and empty for 80% of the year.

The argument that they bring extra income is also misleading. Most true second home owners who only visit a couple of times a year don't contribute much to the economy but are very vocal in interfering in local issues to the detriment of actual residents. One example (I'm not joking on this) was to oppose the planning of a local business that would benefit the community with jobs and tax revenue because of the endangered newts! luckily common sense prevailed but honestly they got very vocal and aggressive about it. It was mainly because they didn't want it to impact their second home.

Holiday makers bring revenue. Absentee second home owners do not.

Hopefully the second home tax increase will increase council tax revenue and help to support our community and vulnerable people.

Why the confused emoji? That's what you are.

How do you expect to be classed when you own two homes? I'm not sure why this is surprising to you.

It is obviously very tough to lose a much loved partner at a young/fairly young age and I'm very sorry that this has happened to you.

However, you are absolutely right that this is a very nice problem to have and one that most people who are bereaved before retirement do not have. Most of them need to continue to work, raise and provide for their families alone. That really is tough and the reality for most of this group.

Owning two and even three houses in your case, which are not rented out, does deprive others of a home to rent or buy. How ever you dress it up, it does. No one needs three homes but everyone needs one. As a society, we have become far too focussed on the individual and selfishness and greed have been lauded to ridiculous extremes, to the detriment of many. This has gone so far in this direction now that we have a major housing crisis and a very divided society.
If people who own multiple properties are encouraged to sell them or made to pay higher taxes, this is a good thing overall. Cars, etc are different because they are not a basic need in the way that housing clearly is. The rest of your comment is not really related to this topic or is hyperbole at this stage.

I suppose the difference is that the second home hasn’t been acquired through choice.

Any extra council tax could be avoided by putting the inherited home on the market, although I believe the council is required to give you a years notice of any increase. So, possibly two years to decide what to do with it.

Can't understand why a few people have compared owning more than one car to more than one house! There is no shortage of cars. There's a desperate shortage of housing. Two very different things and completely different circumstances. If there wasn't a shortage of homes, then this wouldn't really be a problem and we'd not have this thread. It's exactly because there IS a shortage of homes that we are right to examine whether some people should have more than one, whether some should profit out of the misery of others, and look into ways of dealing with the shortage.

You re wrong.

Most of the houses sold as 2nd homes, came available due to death, the adult children long ago moved out of the area.. or the owners moving out of the area..

But one woman posted on local FB page that her mothers house was now up for sale but she refused point blank to take any offers from "outsiders"

Locals don't have 2 or 3 houses gathering dust waiting to be snapped up by a couple from Surrey...

@taxguru 100% i tried pointing this out many pages ago....

I agree with the higher council tax, empty propertied should even attract an additional rate. A holiday let can be beneficial to the local area, the issue is when they are left empty!

I’m thinking if your relative dies can the council start charging council tax to inheritor or do they have to wait for probate or does the CT become part of the estate itms

this is different to buying a second home surely

I think council tax is payable 6 months after probate is granted.

I jointly inherited my Dad's house. It didn't make any of us second home owners because we sold it asap. A family lives in it now.

The first poster is paraphrasing what they saw on Apple News, they are not the second homeowner.

I agree with the general premise of what you are saying, that equating additional charges on 'second cars' as equivalent to additional charges on second homes is ridiculous. However, to be more precise, we don't have a housing shortage. We have a major shortage of affordable homes, both to rent and to buy. We have shortages in certain areas but not throughout the country. Homes that are unoccupied (second homes not rented out full time)exacerbates the problem of both local shortages (where they exist) and affordability. Additional taxes to discourage this is a positive thing and should have been done decades ago.

Sure but it's still a second home.

Those who inherit are free to sell, gain £££ and avoid the extra taxes. Not such a terrible choice!

And yet that is exactly what comes out of a lot of local government stats on ownership - second homes/holiday homes/air bnbs are more likely to be owned within the local government area.

Ultimately you can put 1000% on private second homes CT or force sales - its a drop in the ocean compared to the total number of empty properties nationally . Do it by all means but don't think its going to fix the problems of lack of work and transport which are the real reasons people move away from such areas. Its lack of work and transport which destroys communities.

Every person I know who has left their rural childhood home did so for work, not housing. Without regular work they cannot afford housing even if its cheap - hence villages where properties are priced at the level of a second hand car. Tourism may prevent property prices from plumeting in that way but it rarely provides enough of the full term permanent contract jobs needed to sustain morgages, tenancies and communities and if the balance of tourism vs other industry is out of kilter it can make the good quality job situation worse.

The housing crisis itself is far more complex than can be solved by a extra percentage point on council tax revenues which is probably why successive governments have failed to deal with it successfully. Its a great policy to look as if you are doing something (which was probably one of the attractions for Gove when implementing it). One of those complexities in the past has been councils more interested in protecting local vested interests than local people and failing to plan for or foster other industry in the area, even when benefitting from central or EU cash.

It would be charged to the estate. The problem in recent years has been the massive delays in getting probate even on very straightforward estates. Its reasonable to expect relief on the charge when the property is empty awaiting probate but not all LAs do this.

Similarly the quoted rule about 12 months relief when a property is marketed is not automatic - it varies by LA.

In both cases you need to check the rules within the LA.

Is this going to be applied to London too?

Isn’t the problem when it comes to the housing crisis more about lack of affordable housing and lack of council housing in particular. 2nd homes are not the whole picture. There should be quotas and licensing to ensure balance and to ensure there are not ghost towns and villages outside of summer. Aside from that the government need to step up and ensure there is more social and affordable housing. Blaming 2nd home owners is an over simplistic view and takes the spotlight away from the government and policy failures. Sure 2nd home owners can pay more council tax, all that does is push up the price of a self-catering holiday. Who is that helping exactly?

Problem is the second home owners who visit only occasionally and don't let friends and family use it, or let it out. There was a recent thread on here about a well off family who owned a holiday home and visited 2 x 1 week a year, but didn't allow any (less well off) members of family use property. Only time anyone else was allowed was as unpaid housekeeper/gardener to spruce things up before owners visited.
I think Wales (?) have right idea and 2nd home owners should pay at least twice council tax.

Because second home owners do not rent. They go themselves a few weeks here and there…locals can’t buy their house and they don’t participate in the economy.

We bought our 2nd home in the 90s when there was surplus, not our fault the government decided to let in another 10 million people.

Ah! We could all have 2 houses each if it wasn't for the bloody foreigners.

Problem is the second home owners who visit only occasionally and don't let friends and family use it, or let it out.

Yep. I live in an area popular with tourists and second home owners. It's a remote area. The three houses nearest to me are almost always empty. One is owned by a couple from the USA who visit maybe twice a year for a week at a time. One is owned by an ex-pat living in Europe. She visits even less than the other couple, think she's been twice in the last 3 years for a couple of days each time. Nobody else ever uses these houses. The last house is a new build that nobody has moved into or even visited yet. These three houses are contributing virtually nothing to local community and there's a terrible shortage of housing for locals.

I can't see how they are beneficial to the local amenities. They're not in use 365 days per year. The occupants aren't using the schools, libraries, public transport at commuter times, etc., nor "normal" shops - they're just using the touristy shops, cafes, etc for the peak weeks. Businesses can't survive all year round half of the year being very busy and completely dead the rest of the year.

You may feel a warm glow for buying some souvenirs, a few groceries, and having a few meals, but that's of no comfort for the remaining locals who don't have a school nor library anymore, no public transport to get them to work early enough in the morning, etc.

Locals want proper shops for their day to day spending, not twee little gift shops selling home made candles and boxes of fudge with postcards stuck to the front.

London boroughs are the first councils who should be introducing this charge.

I wouldn’t mind so much if the locals actually wanted to buy property but they don’t, they prefer to rent and don’t want the responsibility of being a home owner. I live in a village with over 25% over homes being holiday and second homes. There are presently 5 or 6 houses for sale but they don’t look like being bought any time soon so eventually they will end up going the same way.