To think rich people shouldn’t be allowed to buy multiple houses when others can’t afford one?

[YourTealBalonz]

I know people say “it’s their money” but I genuinely think the housing crisis is made worse by second-home buyers and landlords snapping up properties just to sit on them. It drives up prices and freezes people out of the market. I’m glad council tax rules are starting to push back on this. AIBU to think second home ownership should be discouraged more openly?

There you go - attack the poster, not the message. Peachy.

In the US not paying child support can be a federal crime and there are all sorts of options once a court order is in place (irrelevant whether the parents were married). A lien can be placed on an owned property, credit ratings are negatively affected if the parent is in arrears, tax authorities are involved and passports and driving and professional licences can be revoked - however licences will not be revoked if this is relevant to the parent's ability to earn and pay child support. As non payment of child support is a federal crime, non payers can technically be jailed, once all legal routes are exhausted.

This is very tangental to discussion of a housing crisis though!

But your action would desteoy the private rented sector. Landlords don’t ‘sit’ on properties. They provide a service in the housing sector. Private rents are so high because of scarcity. We need to encourage the private rented sector( and social rented) to grow to reduce rents. Your action would increase private rents by creating greater scarcity and increase homelessness by creating a larger group of people shut out if the housing market.

It’s not the fault of landlords that private rents are high. It’s due to government policy over decades which has created scarcity in the rented market.

If you really want to improve all sections of the housing market, you’d advocate mass building in the social rented sector. The near loss of that pushed people who can’t buy into private renting, where the supply did not exist. This pushed up rent which created an incentive for people to rent out houses.

be honest. Your post is only thinking of how to improve the situation for people like you, rather than the population as a whole.

This is a huge issue, regardless of posters trying to deflect.

Perhaps rules like Jersey has (minis the exemption for the super rich) are necessary everywhere now...

www.gov.je/LifeEvents/MovingToJersey/LivingInJersey/pages/accommodationrestrictions.aspx

Buying to rent out long term to people who live year round in the area is a completely different category to buying a second or third home to use for occasional short holidays and leave empty 48 weeks per year, and also different to buying to use as a holiday let (which will also be empty 30+ weeks a year in many non urban areas, but even if occupied by tourists takes a property out of the local resident's pool).

Buying to rent on a long term basis doesn't remove a property from the pool available to local people, it just makes it available to rent rather than buy.

Thanks for the information but seriously some of these sites have been empty and undeveloped for well over a decade, one is approaching 20 years.

Agree
but a planning application can take that long to go through if it’s for lots of housing
We ( architects not developers ) have one in planning for 5 years just for 8 properties. That’s 5 years after we’ve done all the work which in itself took nearly two years
That’s why they stack

I think people rich or not should be able to do what they want and what they can afford. Not mh business not my problem

Were you going to buy the London townhouse the multi-millionaire bought for 14 million?

I agree about foreign ownership. My dc can’t afford to buy in London because the prices are inflated by for eg. the taxi driver in Singapore who owns two flats in a block near us. They’re empty, just an asset.
What would banning holiday lets look like? Would we all have to stay in hotels or caravan parks if we wanted a UK holiday?
I’m a second home owner and have absolutely no guilt about it. I’m there now and about a third of the time. It had been empty and on the market for a year, it’s incredibly remote and everyone local is just relieved that their dear ex neighbour’s house sold before it became more decayed. I also pay double council tax although it’s so remote we don’t even have bins collected and we’re not on mains water!

It’s a huge problem in some areas. Some holiday accommodation is needed but when the local workforce cannot find anywhere to live, it needs reining in. It could be tackled with the planning system, by requiring proper planning consent for holiday accommodation, and clamping down on Airbnb.

Prices were high in desirable parts of London decades ago. Why do you think people who worked in London commuted. It is not a new phenomenon.

What should they be allowed to buy?
Let’s debate that!

Use the planning system to support what areas actually need to help them thrive.

Local plans were supposed to deliver this but I think their power was watered down.

With the jobs my dc have they’d have bought with friends a generation ago. They are doing so, just later than ideal. Anyway my point isn’t that young professionals are egregiously damaged by flat sharing or living at home it’s more that there’s absolutely no advantage to having non residents owning empty properties.

If non residents want to own empty properties, they should be paying enough tax to make it no longer be an attractive investment.

We’re stuck in a GDP growth on graph go up cycle which is why successive govts have welcomed uncapped immigration. I think I read somewhere based on the birth rate we should have a much smaller population but it’s immigration driving it up (I want to say 20 million less people).

More people = more GDP to the global markets. Even if this growth doesn’t translate to better living standards for the average person.

I think most of our issues are due to over population on a small creaking island. With the rise in automation and current unemployment - I don’t understand why we need immigration at 500k+ a year. It’s mental and clearly not helping infrastructure issues. But unfortunately you’re called racist if you say this and told we need a replacement rate for the boomers which is crazy to most of us who can see the lack of resources. The illegal boat crossings at 40k men is the same amount of people that live in my village based on the last census. We can’t keep building out of this.

This. We are in a housing association house which we are very grateful for as next to no private rentals around me and the prices are diabolical but they don’t maintain them, they are building new ones all the time, great, but their older properties are badly in disrepair, my kitchen and bathroom are 25+ years old, cabinets and work tops are rotten, doors come off in your hands etc, roughcasting falling off in massive chunks, plaster blown inside, won’t replace a fence that blew down in the winds if they can fob the work off on us they will but we can only do so much of the repairs ourselves which we do.

I think they should be forced to maintain their older properties or sell them, it is soul destroying spending money trying to make it look nice but time and again running into problems

I’m responding to the OP who specifically mentions landlords in her ire.

First post nails it.

I’ve never understood the ‘we desperately need immigration’ argument. We’ve had immigration, a lot of it, yet our economy founders and jobs go unfilled. Clearly it isn’t working?

I’ve never understood the ‘we desperately need immigration’ argument. We’ve had immigration, a lot of it, yet our economy founders and jobs go unfilled. Clearly it isn’t working?

I grew up in a council house in the 70s and 80s before the right to buy. The Council did do a lot to upgrade and maintain the homes. I remember them removing draughty glass doors to the garden, extending and upgrading the kitchen, putting in GCH etc. Council homes used to be desirable homes for aspirational working people. The right to but completely changed this, to social rent being a scarce resource for the most desperate. And I have heard a lot of bad stories about HA as landlords.

We need to build for a strong social rented sector of affordable homes.

And ordinary people who are made homeless and the council has an obligation to put them up in emergency accommodation, at a huge cost. This happened to us, an ordinary family privately renting, landlords gives us notice to leave as he's selling. I applied for about 30 properties in the first week, was only offered 4 viewings. There were about 30 people also viewing, we were lined up at the door and given 5 minutes slots. We weren't successful for any of them, ended up going into emergency accommodation for 3 weeks until I managed to get a house in a very dodgy area. The lady in the council said LLs selling up has greatly increased statutory homelessness.

If you can’t afford to buy, how will you buy my spare ones off me?

Only time my rentals are ever empty is when renovated.