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?

They weren't daft, it was deliberate to enrich them and their friends, just like Blair's 50% push for universities which had enabled millionaires/billionaires to make huge amounts from real estate investments in Uni buildings and student accommodation. It's ALL intentional, politicians aren't as stupid as people think - they act stupid to give that impression and hide what's truly going on behind the scenes.

I agree. If everyone had one house and lived in it, a lot of problems faced by coastal communities would ease. You don’t need a spare house in Cornwall or Tenby or wherever which you only stay in three weeks out of the year. I mean, I’m sure it’s lovely and I’ve hypocritically used Air B&B myself but the wider costs to these communities aren’t worth it in my book.

If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck!

I think we'd all know what an "underoccupied" house looks like. And it's not faffing around the edges arguing about a spare room.

It's like the houses on my road, where there are old couples knocking about in huge 5 bedroom houses, our next door neighbour whose 85 shuffling around his 4 bedroom house. Yes, very rarely, a relative comes to stay, but that's just 1 more bedroom used. 2 or 3 bedrooms in each house are just storage of decades of assorted junk and clothes that don't fit. Not only that, but they all have huge unused gardens, double garages, 2/3 reception rooms, conservatories etc.

No one is arguing about the 2 bed semi with a spare room. They're talking about big houses with more rooms than the occupier will ever need, often deteriorating due to lack of maintenance, etc.

This country voted in millions for Thatcher when she promised to allow council houses to be purchased by tenants. “We” had a choice then, and we made it. The people’s self-interest and stupidity has got us where we are. There’ll be grandparents who bought their council houses complaining about the fact their own DGC can’t afford a home and can’t get a council
house, without ever seeing their own contribution to the state of things. After a long life as a labour voter in I longer give a crap about other people - my life has shown me (and I’m looking at Brexit, Farage, the Austerity Tory years) I’ve been a fool to want to try to make the country better for everyone.

I agree. I rent holiday homes in the UK for short breaks but never rent a "normal" home, i.e. a flat in a block or a house on a housing estate. I can't bring myself to support/encourage such greedy behaviour. We seek out farm/barn conversions (usually in the middle of nowhere), or converted railway carriages (or active railway stations), canal boats, etc. - the kind of place that people wouldn't/couldn't live in as their permanent home.

A shame that Blair/Labour didn't give people the option to vote for more council homes and to stop/reverse the council house sell off!

It doesn’t help but the number of second homes left empty is pretty low.

The bigger factor is the availability of debt. The average house price is 4 times the average couples income, which surprise surprise is the maximum banks will lend. Help to buy made this even worse.

Increasing the population by 10 million in 20 years without building extra homes means that the available homes are always affordable to someone.

I have a house I live in and an apartment that I rent. I inherited some money, had to do something with it, didn't fancy the stock market. I try to be an excellent landlord, and I set the rent below market value. Probably it contributes to house price increases in some way but I don't really feel responsible fur the entire housing market.

The market is capitalism.

I don't think so. I think that's a very small part of the market and, if anything, has decreased in number,

What drove house prices out of reach is greed. Pure and simple greed.

Because it used to be you had to get 20% deposit and could only borrow up to 4x salary.

Then banks got greedy and started offering 100% mortgages and up to 10x salary at one point.

So someone on say £30k could borrow £120k but had to have 20% deposit, so could buy a house for £150k
Then someone on £30k could borrow £300k.
So double the price of the house. Because there was more money, if you had a house lots of people wanted, they'd offer more because they could get more money from the bank.
That's what drove house prices up.

Partly.

Mainly we aren't building enough - like nowhere near enough - affordable first home and family homes, in the right areas (ie where there is work and transport available).

This is because our green belt legislation needs an update and developers need to be stopped from manipulating prices by holding onto land, and (I'm guessing) there also needs to be more transparency on the relationship between local authorities and developers to make sure there isn't corruption there.

I do think second homes are an issue in some areas - London is full of new build tower blocks that are basically bank safety deposit boxes in the sky - ie owned by foreign nationals to give them a base in Britain for Finance reasons. Also areas like Cornwall where holiday homes are really popular. So I think we do need legislation to sort that out. But overall it's a lack of building.

That's part of it too, and this has been fuelled by the rise of duel income families.

Up to WW2 the average house was 3 times the average salary and had been for 600 years.

But it's also we have a much bigger population that lives longer, and not enough houses in the areas where there is work. More houses (apart from doing the basic job of housing people) will allow the market to drop.

We also need more social housing of course.

But that home is being rented out. So one side has an investment and the other side has a home. So no, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. We will be doing the same.

When Thatcher implement Right to Buy, the council housing sold was being replaced with new build council housing. The housing stock sold often needed significant investment to remain habitable, so the scheme had widespread support with taxpayers and councils who could see the value of offloading the old housing stock to the people who lived in the houses at a good price, as they would be liable for repair costs and would take pride in improving their built environment. It didn’t always work, but the idea was seen as sustainable and cost effective. At the time, house prices were much lower relative to earnings and many lost value in the early 1990s recession. The problems was two fold: house prices boomed in the late 90s and council house building ground almost to a halt.

The problem is that everyone likes to blame the little man who has inherited a second property or has invested in a BTL for retirement.

Rather than looking at the off shore conglomerates and faceless big businesses who own most of the property in this country.

I only have one property by the way.

So what do you propose? That people are forced to sell these big houses against their will? And where are they expected to live afterwards? There sure as hell aren't enough suitable smaller houses for them to move into.

The issue about property in the UK is that it is 'undertaxed' with the Sultan of Brunei paying as much for his multi million pound palace in London as a 3 bed in Burnley.

If we had a tax that reflected the value and no single occupier exemption plus of course all the inheritance tax exemptions then it would be less attractive to sit on a hiuse you were no longer making full use of.

All housing should be nationalised and allocated based on need.

Yes, I rent a flat on much the same basis. The flat is properly managed by an agent and there has only been one very small rent increase since 2012. My tenant has been there for some years, he's elderly, so doesn't want the responsibility of owning a property, and is very happy there.
Sadly the flat is in a listed building and I can't meet the current letting standards for insulation as the council won't allow changes, so I'll probably have to sell the flat when he leaves, if not before.

Oh don't be ridiculous.

I think it’s more that people used to live as families and now families break down more often so one family in years gone by are now occupying two houses.

Who are you going to blame once the Boomers are dead?

There are lots of families living in homes too small for them!

Such under-occupiers could be "nudged" to sell, such as removing the single occupancy council tax discount for 3+ bedroom homes. And incentives such as no stamp duty for down scaling.

Oh I'm all for incentives for people to move to smaller properties but the poster I originally quoted said it should be illegal to occupy a property with more bedrooms than you need. That's a crazy idea.

But some people need rent, there’s a shortage of properties. If you can’t have rental properties how can you move cities for work, be housed as a university student or get a short term rental during divorce proceedings? You need a assured shorthold tenancy market for flexibility