We need to stop letting any Tom, Dick, and Harry from turning London properties into banks to store their I'll gotten wealth
by sabdotzed
We need to stop letting any Tom, Dick, and Harry from turning London properties into banks to store their I'll gotten wealth
by sabdotzed
25 comments
Their ill gotten wealth too.
No it wouldn’t. You’ve been sold a convenient lie that suits both parties. Conservatives hate foreigners, Labour hates rich people, so narratives about rich foreigners are allowed to run wild
London would never. It’ll never turn away foreign money, it’s addicted to it.
It would require a lot of backbone and guts to piss off rich foreign investors and sadly our governments (tories and labour) lack that due to not giving a shit about the struggling middle and working class.
Yep, taxing non-EU citizens 100% would have quite a big effect in London indeed
Yes, we need to prioritise people who live/work in London and don’t already have a property portfolio.
Why does the UK keep getting rinsed? Housing, transport, energy… It’s very demotivating to live here.
We also need to have forever fixed interest mortgages like other countries do, instead of needing to refinance every 5 years
Much of the UK economy is propped up by inflated house prices. The more money people’s houses are worth, the more money they can loan/ feel that they have in their pocket.
No government would ever willingly do anything detrimental to the housing market. Liz Truss did that last by increasing mortgage rates for everyone and that worked out brilliantly.
Am i the only one who thinks this as it is might not be the best idea? I think letting non citizen UK residents to buy a house should be fine (atleast 1), we should tax non residents on all purchases and non uk citizens that are residents here a tax on multiple properties? If someone moves here and lives and works here, they should be able to own their own home no?
Never gonna happen. This would crash so many funds around the world, especially in China and Russia. London is literally their monopoly board, and you’re just a poor piece trying to settle on the right square.
I’m no expert but wouldn’t overseas high end buyers use a limited company to avoid the increase in stamp duty?
Sales to non-EU nationals made up just 4.6% of sales in Spain in 2023. It’s really not that much.
A few similar ideas:
– progressive taxation based on the number/value of properties a person or company owns beyond their primary home. For example, if you own one rental property/holiday home you’d pay 10% tax on it, 2 properties then 20% on each etc. to limit the size of property empires. Each year increase the rate to encourage steady sell off and dismantle landlords without crashing the economy
– all landlords to require a paid license, registration and to meet property standards to a higher level than currently. Rents to be tied to criteria and performance of maintenance.
– London schools are being closed as fewer children live here now: all school land must be dedicated to creating social housing
– regulate service charges fairly: many shared ownership and new-build flats come with a service charge of £400+ a month for basic communal cleaning and rubbish collection, making them a rip-off
FFS just build more houses, it’s that simple. Why people are so hell bent on rationing something that is NOT a finite resource?
The Spanish proposal for 100% tax on foreign owned Spanish property is an interesting one because the fiscal set up in Spain is different from the UK. This has been proposed by Spanish central government in Madrid but it’s their regional governments that decide the rates of transfer tax in their regions. Some of the regions may go for a high rate (hello Madrid and Barcelona) but others won’t want it.
This raises the question of how it could be implemented in the UK. The Treasury would hate it but why not devolve stamp duty to the Mayor of London, local councils ect. They could swap central government grant for the right to collect stamp duty. This would make local politics matter more. Encourage more house building and make a really over centralised state a bit less over centralised.
I can see properies in slough jumping in price and demand. Oh sorry, it was just a fly on my screen.
This would disincentivise the supply of new housing and would do nothing to free up existing housing. (If the foreign owners occupy the property, they would just rent instead; if they don’t occupy the property, but let it, then it makes no difference who owns it.) Almost all homes in London are occupied. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences)
100,000 homes are owned by foreigners in London. The waiting list for social housing alone is 300,000.
We can blame foreigners and throw around catchphrases until we’re blue in the face, but none of the numbers ever actually line up.
Nothing will improve until the British people accept that this is a problem we have created, and continue to create, for ourselves. Until that happens nobody will change their mindset to accept the hard – or even easy – sacrifices that any solution would require.
It would help but it really wouldn’t have the impact most would probably expect.
The primary issue remains a lack of supply rather than non-resident buying
We need to increase supply to cater for *all* types of demand, not try to reduce demand. Trying to crater demand isn’t going to work. Nobody has ever solved a supply-side issue with a demand-side intervention.
This is such a massive and frustrating distraction from the real issue (not enough houses being built.)
We need:
1. Land Value Tax
2. Planning reform
Pretty sure this wouldn’t make any meaningful difference
London vacancy rate is less than 1%
The number of properties owned by foreigners is under 3%.
There aren’t enough homes to go around. That’s why people are living with five strangers into their 30s and why people move out of the city to have children. It’s crippling.
Why do we persist in believing a clever tax or rule tweak is going to save us from this fundamental reality?
We need more homes. That’s the most important factor by miles.
Loads of other countries limit housing purchases by foreign and/or non-tax resident buyers. Off the top of my head, Dubai has many areas where only locals can buy, as does Thailand.
It’s impossible for the average Brit, with our high taxes and unimpressive wages, to compete with the type of wealthy people who pile into the London property market
They should 100% do it, then you will all definitely be able to afford that house you have been dreaming of in Notting Hill on your 40k salary with no savings to speak of.
All this will do is create a fantastic opportunity for accountants and lawyers to devise a system where a British citizen loans money from a foreign company to buy a UK property, with the foreign company securing the loan against the property, and the person paying a token repayment of £1 a year. Then a foreign person “rents” the property from the “owner” for a nominal sum say £50 a month.
If I, a random Redditors, can think of a loop hole reading this suggestion while taking a shit, it’s a bad suggestion.
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