1 million homes lie empty.

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The government won't like this headline, after all, we have a shortage of housing didn't ya know.:rolleyes:

New figures will show that Britain is on course for a record number of houses and flats lying empty.
Some of the rise has been caused by home owners facing repossession. Other empty homes were bought by property developers who have since struggled to raise the money to renovate and furbish them for occupation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/4580382/Recession-means-one-million-empty-homes-for-first-time.html

Cannon_Fodder

On the Vauxhall thread I was influenced by the thoughts of those who said "if they want a bail-out, they should be made to release assets"

i.e sell airfields full of cars...

To individuals might be tricky, as its not fair across the board.

So, perhaps to Govt/council/police etc to provide a quid pro quo for any bail-out that is deemed necessary.


In the property arena, the same thought might apply.

Big developers are getting help in propping up the market, through Govt supported schemes where people own half and rent half, and/or get lumbered with a loan, or similar.

This falsely underpins house prices, which if it is considered a necessary evil for the good of the wider economy, could at least be in part "paid for" through "compulsory purchase" of their unsold stock, or heavy discounts to create a new social/council housing stock.

At the smaller end, i.e. private landlords and second homes, business rates or council tax should be used to encourage owners to either make use of them, or give them up.

Maybe waiving CGT if a scheme was created where a house was passed to the council for social/council purposes.

Not beyond the wit of man to make a dent in 1 million wasted properties, surely?

bubblesmoney

many places have rent control legislation in place. local govts can forcibly take control of empty property and 2nd homes etc and let it out to council tenants and owner gets a low rate decided by the authorities. many places like bombay / mumbai have rents frozen at almost 1945 levels for places that have been taken over by the govt. but the owner still is responsible for the property tax which will be many times the annual rent! so owner gets screw*d even if they bought their house from meagre savings and later had to move elsewhere due to work. property gets poorly maintained and the whole area becomes run down as a consequence. so this leads to a lot of corruption where owners try to save their properties from such state controlled renting and also many places the tenant demands money to vacate which many times is almost 1/3 - 1/2 property cost! then criminal elements get involved in some places to coerce / evict tenants. best things is to let the market decide otherwise it just increases govt expenses without doing much good in the long run

to my shock i found that even new york has rent control legislation even now! remember reading about it online in the new york times i think and even there the problems seems to be the same. recently the state legislature was trying / enacted some laws regarding this issue there increasing / perpetuating this antiquated system in areas / buildings affected by rent control.

wonder if they will go down the route of forcible acquisitions for council renting in the uk as well if there are so many vacant properties. this must be a problem in posh coastal towns where local people cant buy proerty because rich outsiders buy 2nd homes there which gets hardly used. think there must be hundreds of serviced apartments vacant in london as well. atleast thats the impression i got when i spent a few days at a couple of these serviced apartments in london city centre.