A divided society-what can be done?

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.

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.

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.

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.?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Of course there will always be people who want/need to rent. My point is that the introduction of buy-to-let mortgages led to a massive proliferation in rental properties to the detriment of the lower end of the property market which caused an increase on people who are trapped in renting because they have no choice, while at the same time they are paying for the buy-to-letter's addional property. Am I mad to think that is basically unethical? I've been in the position to buy a buy-to-let flat myself but have consciously chosen not to go down that route for that very reason...

I agree Annie. I don't like the idea of a perfectly good home being left empty, but that is your choice. It's your money and your property.

devongirl My understanding is that people who are 'trapped in renting' are unable to get a mortgage or save for a deposit. It's not as though there's some sort of conspiracy to only sell a property to landlords.

Well trisher, I hope you don't get to rule the world anytime soon. I agree that having houses lying empty, whilst there are so many homeless people looking for a roof over their heads, is unacceptable and needs a solution, but I find your suggestions draconian. If I bought a car, but chose to leave it unused in a garage, would you say that that too should be compulsorily purchased so that those without a vehicle of their own could use it? Instead of issuing state backed draconian dogma, with penalties for failing to tow the line, wouldn't it be better to encourage them to do so? No one reacts well to being forced to do anything, no matter how well intentioned the aims are. Carrot and stick.......

Chewbacca, I can hardly believe you feel that is an appropriate analogy - or ist it a joke? How can car ownership possibly be comparable with the need for a person to have a roof over their head?

Primrose65 my gripe is actually the policy of allowing buy-to-let mortgages; previously it was only possible to get one mortgage.

One of the reasons young people cannot raise a deposit is because they have to rent for so long and are unable to save!

Everyone knows that properties left empty deteriorate quickly.
Some of the properties that are buy to leave have been empty for over ten years. They must have agents who look after the upkeep. Why not have people living in them?

It was simply used as a broad analogy devon, as I'm sure you're well aware. And I reiterate my earlier point, there are a myriad of reasons why people choose to rent, not all of them are because they cannot afford to buy. I also reiterate that, whilst finding accommodation for the homeless is vitally important, draconian measures being used against landlords would be counter productive. In my opinion.

"Treating housing as an asset is not benign. Hoarding homes pushes prices up, and encourages market supply to boost what is most profitable – luxury flats that can be left empty and flogged when the market is booming, not family homes that can be bought on a modest income. And when land values soar as a result of a keen market interest in buying up property, unscrupulous local authorities eye up the land social housing is built on, and consider whether turfing out council tenants to make a quick buck on the ground homes stand on is worth a punt.

The public seems to be accepting the idea that a right to shelter should trump a right to profiteering: the histrionic claims that requisitioning empty homes will lead to families being turfed out of their properties reveals there is no proper argument to be made for letting homes lie empty while people sleep on the streets.

No one will be kicked out of a home they live in, but consistently allowing people to hoard an asset that is in short supply has no ethical argument behind it. If people hoarded food the way they hoard homes, hungry people would riot. The outcry over the revelations of these empty homes and support for Corbyn’s proposal to boost powers for councils to requisition empty properties, shows the public is in agreement. "

Of course durham, you're absolutely right. So would it not be a better idea if the owners of those properties be contacted by housing organisations, with an offer to bring them up to a habitable standard and they agree to manage the tenancies and share the rental income with the property owner?

This is one reason I cannot support Corbyn , he wants state control .

People do hoard food.

There's such a difference between homelessness and the frustration of not being able to save for a deposit when renting.
Looking at the Shelter website, there are so many personal or structural causes of homelessness, I don't think simply putting people from the street into empty homes would solve anything.

Don't you understand Chewbacca these empty properties are bought as investments and are never meant to be occupied they make their money from the increases in property values and nothing else. In London this is resulting in certain areas becoming unoccupied. The knock on effect this has is devastating to our society. Small business cease to function, key workers are priced out of the area and services become untenable. I simply want to live in a society where everyone lives in affordable housing and cities function as they should, that is vibrant and supportive environments with a strong local economy. Do you really think people who leave houses empty have the right to wreck society and leave people homeless?

What should we do Primrose65 shrug our shoulders and turn back to our centrally heated homes. It isn't the people on the street we are talking about, it is families living in B&B accommodation for years because no properties are available (And if you want to talk money think of the costs involved in that and who is making a huge profit)