A divided society-what can be done?

If I buy a property it is my choice if I leave it empty, this compulsory buying is taking away freedom of choice

Although buy to let is comparatively new, people living in rented properties is not. Is the problem with buy to let that it's an individual who gets the benefit? Is it OK if it's a company? Or should no one except the state own property to rent out?

If the property is removed from rental stock and left empty it would be compulsorily purchased and used to house the homeless.

But surely not everyone actually wants to buy a house. For a myriad of reasons, people want to rent instead. If you incur penalties against landlords, either in higher taxes, or penalties if their house is left vacant for any length of time, they will remove that property from the rental stock available. There has to be a balance.

I do agree trisher, I feel that buy-to-let has seriously distorted the property market by removing the very properties that first-time buyers can aspire to from the market, causing shortage and increasing prices; furthermore, unlike residential properties which come back on the market when the owners move, owners of buy-to-let properties simply find new tenants when the current ones move out, so they may not be available to home-buyers for years.

The trouble with all these 'rules' is that you can always circumvent them and catch people out when it's unintentional. You have to define 'empty' and as soon as you do that, people will find a way around it.
I don't think the state buying up Mayfair mansions will make a blind bit of difference to the homeless.

Yes if the property is not in the process of being sold or rented out.
She needs a better agent who vets tenants

A colleague of mine was left her mother's terraced house in her will. She decided to replace all windows; new boiler; new kitchen and bathroom; new flooring and redecorate. She put it with a local agent to rent out. Within a month, the first complaints from neighbours were coming in; loud parties late into the night, fighting and arguments. The tenants were told to keep the noise down. By the second month, the police had been called in, by the neighbours, due to more fighting and arguments and anti social behaviour. The third month had the police arrest one of the tenants for drug related offences and drugs were actually found at the property in such quantities that it was obvious that the tenants were dealing. My colleague began the long process of terminating the tenancy. But before the process had got very far, one of the neighbours contacted her to tell her that the tenants had gone. When the agent and my colleague went round to the house, they found that 4 of the 5 internal doors had been ripped off; the bath had had cigarettes stubbed out on the edge and inside; the kitchen was wrecked with doors and drawers hanging off/worktops with cigarette burns/the laminate floor lifting due to flooding. Graffiti had been scrawled on the newly painted walls. Light fittings were broken.
All in all, it cost her £9,000 to have the house modernised in the first place and another £4000 to put it all right again 3 months later. The house is currently empty because she can't face the trauma again and so will sell it eventually. And that's a shame, because reasonably priced houses to rent are in very short supply around here, but who can blame her. Should she be taxed for having an empty house that could be being used to house a family in need?

durhamjen

If you are making your point by asking:-

" Why is it that a right to profiteer from housing seems more acceptable to some than the right to a roof over your head?"

Are you asking the question because you believe ' all property ' owning is anti social other than to own one property to put a roof over our own heads.?

But - if people have bought them instead of a pension and the profit from them spread over the years owned is less than, say, the 20% income tax over that same period would that be fair?
I would think that it would be better to rent them out (which would pay the mortgage on them if they are bought on a loan) but there are risks to that too.

I'd tax heavily anyone owning empty property, tax heavily anyone owning more that 3 properties. Require empty properties in inner cities to be compulsorily purchased if they were left empty for more than three years and used to accommodate families. Use any extra income to build council housing.

I do know a couple of people who have bought two or three properties as investments for a pension.

One was in despair recently as a tenant had left the place in a terrible state and it was going to cost a lot in repair and renovation. It was someone he knew (friend of a friend, recommended but not through an agency) so quite a wake-up call.
So perhaps it would have been better to have left it empty.

And all the sarcy posts on here show that you care less about homeless and people who can't afford the rent than you do about sniping at me.
Nothing new there, Elegran and Chewbacca.

Thanks for responding, Jalima.
Blair has built up quite a property empire himself, hasn't he? Perhaps that's why he encouraged buy to let, although I doubt whether he has problems with his pensions.

[sigh] some tenants can be so difficult and trash the place

Definitely profiteering when you buy hundreds of houses and leave them empty. Buy to let is different to buy to leave.

apart from that, I dunno

Why is it that a right to profiteer from housing seems more acceptable to some than the right to a roof over your head?

Could the answer be that people were encouraged to Buy-to-Let during the Blair/Brown years as an investment for their pension when pension funds started to look rather precarious after the banking crisis?

It was not seen as 'profiteering' - it was seen as investment with a better return than could be obtained anywhere else.

dj was being the teacher, continuing to ask the question until she got the answer she wanted, even if she had to supply it herself.

thanks Trisher Knew you'd understand.

Wonderful standard of debating Chewbacca you must be so proud of the intellectual level of your posts.

I told you, in my first reply "I dunno". Why are you asking me again?

So what is your answer?
I said it was AN answer, not THE answer, which is what you asked.
There could be lots of answers.

I'm not "stirring" as you so eloquently put it durham ! You posted a question. I answered that I didn't know the answer to your question. I asked if you knew the answer. You posted the answer. I asked, if you knew the answer, why did you post the question. You said that that was the answer. I asked if your question had been rhetorical. Now you say I'm stirring!

Can't win!