We have a housing shortage if you ignore the 840,000 empty homes

SquatNow

So fundementals are good for price rises:

A REPORT by Bricks and Mortar last month on the scandal of Britain’s 840,000 empty homes provoked an extraordinary response from readers. There was a sense of outrage that local councils, in particular, were allowing properties to stand vacant, unrepaired and unmanaged. In other cases we heard from families weary of pursuing the owner of a derelict property on their street whose state of disrepair was affecting not only the value of neighbouring homes but also damaging their fabric. The Government has promised that these homes will be part of the solution to Britain’s housing crisis, but the reaction to our report indicated that there seemed scant evidence of this in many areas, despite the efforts of the more enlightened councils.

Full Story: http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/buying_and_selling/article2966606.ece


I wonder if they have a full list of all 840,000 I could download...

lynzpower

I can tell you of a few council estates in london which is "sitting" pretty much empty.

Basically the council is doing a decant and knocking it down and starting again. for some reason my cut & paste isnt working - but the ferrier estate in Greenwich is one of them. If you google ferrier estate there is an article on "therat&mouse" which is very interesting- about CPO's/RTB and council stock in a crumbling estate.

Saying that, not all empty properties registered have no one living in
the problem is with these figures on empty homes, they unfortunately dont state whether the properties are habitable or not. Ive just worked on a small decant of one block, half of them were in good nick, but the bottom ones certainly werent -with structural problems. therefore theres 20 homes been demolished. In its place, I bet you they fit more than 20 flats and one block of shops. the shops will go ( theres no shortage in london anway) and the car parking will probably go, as per the car free development way of doing things in inner london these days, and I expect to see at least 30 properties on the same block. Whether these are for social housing tho remains to be seen, I think it will be a mixed tenure, as the estate itself was ver y much a sink estate with a shocking reputation ( crack houses, prostitution, gun crime etc)

I do have a problem with rebuilding especially in terms of environmental concerns. However, many of the council blocks Ive been too over the years have "al inclusive" heating & hot water so they are like a furnace all year round. No incentive to save energy or money in that situation - as everyone is living off a communal boiler. As EPCs are coming in on all rented property- I suspect the government and ALMOS will have to pull thier socks up in the coming years. After all its costing us taxpayers more and more in rising energy costs.

velocity_boy

840,000 empty houses, right ok then, i won't argue with anyones figures cos i haven't got any better info myself but if you take out the ones that are vacant and for sale and then the ones that have been abandoned cos no-one wants them cos of where you are then how many of them are left???? and how many of that figure are habitable??

hmmm.......

BettiePage

velocity_boy wrote: »

840,000 empty houses...how many of them are left????

hmmm.......

839,999???

Hapless_2

Atomised wrote: »

I'm fed up with the new build obsession in this country. I've seen 2 new developments on green (ish) land this week. Why?! Empty houses are everywhere, it should be publicised more

Because if the areas are anything like the village of Appledore in North Devon, most of them are second homes and are empty 9 months of the year!

epz_2

velocity_boy wrote: »

840,000 empty houses, right ok then, i won't argue with anyones figures cos i haven't got any better info myself but if you take out the ones that are vacant and for sale and then the ones that have been abandoned cos no-one wants them cos of where you are then how many of them are left???? and how many of that figure are habitable??

hmmm.......

its not that nobody wants the abandoned houses but that they are owned by some unknown entity and nobody can buy them to renovate.

if the council reposesed and auctioned off all places abandoned after a set time with no reseve then somebody would buy and renovate them, even just as a btl to farm dss rents.

guppy

Surely it doesn't matter if they are habitable or not? The amount needed to make them habitable is probably tiny in comparison to what someone would pay to live there.

Running_Horse

As already discussed.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=579480&highlight=empty+homes

lynzpower

guppy wrote: »

Surely it doesn't matter if they are habitable or not? The amount needed to make them habitable is probably tiny in comparison to what someone would pay to live there.

well yes it does. Lenders wont lend for most of the sort of properties that are vacant in decants as
a) they may have a CPO
b) they may have asbestos etc
c) the retentions on mortgages are too large to undertake the renov work

if its a 12th floor flat in a tower block with structural issues at the base, then you wont get a mortgage on it in any case.

PasturesNew

I had a seemingly derelict house a few doors from me where I lived.

The house belonged to an old lady who had been taken to a nursing home. It was still full of her stuff (minus the goodies/silverware that were stolen during breakins by potential squatters and similar).

She truly believed her house was still "a palace" and she'd be returning there one day.

In the end, she signed it over to her relative that was to inherit it. The house was cleared of her goods and chattals and it was put on the market. A guy knocked on my door to ask about the house, he wanted to split it into two separate houses - and I saw a planning permission be submitted for it.... then nothing.

House does not appear to have been sold (a year on), nothing's been done with it.

It costs a lot of money to do up derelict houses, there has to be a sound financial reason to do so in the first instance and to be able to afford the ongoing maintenance costs on it thereafter.

One of the things with "right to buy" was that the councils were ditching their older houses (harder to maintain/keep upgrading) so they were left only with newer ones. To have an assorted pile of odd houses all over the place that have different/individual maintenance needs isn't cost effective.

If they were individually cost effective to do up/rent/sell, then over the last 5 years private developers would have stepped forward to snap them up.

As for a lot of empty houses, many fall into two other categories:
1) 2nd homes - hardly ever used. Held onto for the increased value the owners expected from them.
2) Buy to Let - where the landlord didn't do their research properly and are stuck with owning homes that nobody can afford to rent. My rent is about half or 1/3rd of what landlords want for 1-bed flats.

Generali

There's no shortage of housing (although there is a shortage of some types of houses in some areas). If there was then there'd be loads of people living in cardboard boxes.

The UK has (I believe) the lowest proportion of empty homes in Europe.