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

[OneRoofIsEnough]

I’m not saying they’re the only reason but I do think anyone who owns more than one residential property has played some part in pushing prices up over the last few decades.
When housing is treated as an investment vehicle rather than shelter, demand increases, supply tightens and first-time buyers lose out. Over time, that has made home ownership unaffordable for huge numbers of people.

AIBU to think this isn’t just “the market”, it’s a collective outcome created by individual choices?

No shit!

Well, of course this is the market. It's the very basics of supply and demand.

Most people with more than one house let the others out so they are used all the time. Very very few people have more than one actual home as in, a country residence and a house in town. And they pay capital gains tax on the increase in value of the second house.

No I don’t agree. Every house bought to rent out is also someone’s home it’s just they are a tenant and not a homeowner. There is an argument in respect of holiday homes or houses which are not occupied all year but there are other factors such as a shortage of new property( restricts supply), increase in single adult households (increases demand), transition from 1 income to 2 (in a sellers market this increases prices).

You are right that it’s our choices that drive the market though even if we don’t realise it. Our choices to save for a deposit, out bid another potential buyer, voting choices, objections to local planning permissions, and yes choice to invest in holiday homes but I don’t think the regular buy to let or accidental landlord is to blame.

If anyone is responsible for house price rises, its Govts who have allowed in millions of people and failed to build council housing.

BTL wouldn't be a thing, if people who cannot afford to buy, could rent a council house as what used to happen pre 1980s.

No, It is demand that pushes prices up. Ie the number of people wanting a home. It doesn't matter where that demand comes from.

• People living separately, divorces etc
• immigration, whether legal or illegal
• people owning more than one home, for their personal use
• People using family homes for Airbnb
• Non-Brits buying property as an investment and leaving it sitting empty.
• Empty nesters not downsizing because of the cost. (This will be me next year)

All partially to blame.

People owning a house and renting it out are not to blame, because it is still someone's home. Cost is related to demand - or the number of people wanting a home. If there were fewer people, the amount a landlord could ask in rent would drop.

I think it's also adult children living with their parents longer and paying them no or very low rents, it's enabled higher prices than would otherwise have been sustainable if kids left home sooner.

The very rich who have multiple *empty’ homes, (just to store their clothes, cars and lifestyle) between visits, are such a very low percentage of the population, that the effect is probably minimal.
As others have said, people with a property portfolio, mainly rent their other properties to families.

*even the ‘empty’ ones would have skeleton staff and security.

I can’t get over excited by the property of the rich & famous, they have always existed here and abroad.
I would be more interested in various illegal dodges being closed down and more help and less pedantic hinderance for people doing up homes that have either been empty or been previously occupied by an owner that has (for various reasons) has fallen into terrible repair.

In Ireland they have had a system whereby following a successful application, buyers of empty buildings can submit reciepts to claim an agreed amount within an agreed date. This is designed to help families live and renovate previously empty properties without the overall cost making it totally impossible. To discourage other applicants, buyers have to live in the property for an agreed time, thereafter on a sliding scale the grant has to be repaid.
I expect Irish posters will be able to fine tune the details.

In Britain it would seem, that even if a cowshed with 2 walls and half a roof, and will totally fall into the ground within a few years, planning consent will often demand that you have to conform to certain rules that will double the renovation budget…

the impact of people living longer and remaining in their own homes is a much more significant factor than second homes.

Ad to that numbers living alone due to divorce and rise in single households plus policy of reducing social housing.

No, corporates is what have driven houses out of reach. Man on the street type landlords maintained competition in the marketplace and ultimately (before the tax changes) kept rents affordable. So much of our housing is now PE owned. Transactions involving 2000 plus homes at a time are commonplace. Developers sell huge portfolios of new homes to these corporates too. None of us will be able to afford a house soon. These models only work because they are so highly leveraged and they need to keep growing the portfolios accordingly (and for house prices to keep increasing).

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.

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!

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

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.

@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.

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.

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

This!!!! 100%!!!!

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

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.

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”. 🙄

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…

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.

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.

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