Compulsory purchase order thoughts...

anewman

Just been watching "The Truth About Property" on BBC1. I thought - why should houses be compulsorily purchased for crap prices like £8,000 - and eventually re-developed and sold for £140,000 with parking spaces included for an extra £10,000, yet the only offer for the original occupants is to be able to buy back at £99,000.

Surely the driving motivation for compulsory purchase should be to improve a problematic area, not to make money and bring wealthy people in. Therefore why not change the law, such that no-one can possibly profit (or at least profit to any worthwhile extent) from compulsory purchase orders? Ideal would be the original owner getting 100% of the sale price minus the actual costs of redeveloping that property alone, or offered the property at the cost price of re-developing it. I don't know all the ins and outs unfortunately, but thought it was an interesting idea. Only problem is if there is no profit in it, would they actually bother improving communities, to which the answer is probably no - as there has to be money at the end of it for it to be worthwhile for the gods in suits.

Running_Horse

Depends on the area? If it is a whole street of empty boarded up houses rotting away then fair enough. There is apparently a trade in such houses being bought in the hope of £40,000 compulsory purchases. Who cares if such speculators get their fingers burned?

BobProperty

anewman wrote: »

.....Surely the driving motivation for compulsory purchase should be to improve a problematic area, not to make money and bring wealthy people in....

The problem is that the powers that be think that the problems are solved by bringing wealthy people in. You only had to look and listen to the councillor in that program (the guy looked like a double glazing salesman!). Wealthy people pay their own council tax and don't need benefits. House prices go up and everyone feels good. The world (Salford !) is a better place.
In reality the money isn't there to change all the houses in the area, plus the decent working class people like the two families shown would eventually make sufficient political noise that it wouldn't happen.
I wish the buyer from Stockport had stepped back and looked at what he was doing. He's just paid £140,000 (was it?) for a terraced house in Salford. He could have got a 2 bed flat in the Heatons for that. He can now look forward to years of living there knowing that the local scumbags know which houses have the good gear in them and where to nick the best cars from. Any flattening or fall in the housing market will render his place unsellable, because non-one will be putting any more money into the area as well as all the other problems a "flat" market will bring.

TJ27

Some of my colleagues do compulsory purchase stuff where houses have been left vacant for long periods of time. (Possibly different circumstances to what you're talking about.)

We are obliged by law to obtain market value for these properties. The way we do this is to put them up for auction. In that way they are seen to be sold for what somebody is prepared to pay. No more and no less.

I guess if the purchaser then does a bit of work to the house and sells at a profit, well he or she has gambled and won.

BobProperty

TJ27 wrote: »

Some of my colleagues do compulsory purchase stuff where houses have been left vacant for long periods of time. (Possibly different circumstances to what you're talking about.)......

IIRC there were streets of terraces a lot of which were empty but some were still occupied or OO. The council decided to buy up and renovate (or rather get someone to renovate) entire streets or blocks of streets at a time.

TJ27

Ah right, I see. The question of CPing rows of houses when some of them are still occupied is quite tricky and I'm unsure regarding whether I agree with it.

However, the main purpose of doing these CPs is to bring houses back into occupation. So if a terrace currently has 10 full and 10 empty houses, it might make sense to CP them. You can then renovate them (or bulldoze them!) and perhaps have 20/30 full houses. So potentially that action could house 10/20 families who were previously homeless.

That's very simplistic, and like I say I'm not sure if I agree with it, but as far as the council are concerned the idea is to house more people rather than make money.

tr3mor

BobProperty wrote: »

I wish the buyer from Stockport had stepped back and looked at what he was doing. He's just paid £140,000 (was it?) for a terraced house in Salford. He could have got a 2 bed flat in the Heatons for that. He can now look forward to years of living there knowing that the local scumbags know which houses have the good gear in them and where to nick the best cars from. Any flattening or fall in the housing market will render his place unsellable, because non-one will be putting any more money into the area as well as all the other problems a "flat" market will bring.

I think you're being unfair. The house had laminate floors and halogen spotlights!

Seriously, anyone buying there must be completely mad. It's one of the worst places I've ever driven through. Yuck!