Can we just make it a nationwide thing that second+ homes pay double council tax? If we can’t deter people from doing it (although this will definitely reduce the yield and help) then at least they should be supporting councils.
Also properties left empty should pay a higher rate of tax as well.
The number of rented properties in the U.K. is growing at a far faster rate than the number being built (double in 2019) and accounts for close to a 3rd of all house stock. There’s no point building more £500k houses if the bottom end of the market keeps getting swallowed up by buy to let.
*Edit: got to say I’m really impressed with the quality of responses and discussion from this post, from both people who agree and disagree. I kept it deliberately vague and simple, and the amount of genuinely good points made is really awesome!*
There should be huge restrictions across the country when it comes to owning second homes. All foreign investment in the domestic housing market should be stopped immediately.
You could easily solve the housing crisis, which is far more based on people using property as a hedge rather than an actual shortage.
But let’s not pretend that the so called housing crisis isn’t entirely engineered. It suits the rich and also gives the established classes a sense of smug satisfaction.
So let’s just call it what it is – a state backed Ponzi.
It also serves as a powerful form of social control – the more indebted a population, the less risks they are willing to take on challenging the ruling classes.
So does this stop people from whitby buying second homes elsewhere?
I doubt a local authority can prevent exchanges of title and subsequent registration with the land registry. Perhaps a referendum on devolution of powers would be of more use.
I’d vote for a party in the local elections that does this.
Heck, I’d vote for a party that vows to make the South West (or at least Bristol) secede from the UK and become its own independent state.
I wonder how this will work out. This new rule is only for new builds so my guess is Whitby will suddenly become less appealing to developers. Given the average price is £290k it’s still going to be out of reach for a lot of locals.
This should be everywhere. Here in Cornwall if you’re about to be made homeless you’re screwed. Nowhere to rent and social housing is limited. Yet there are thousands of second homes and air BnBs!
Oh, that picture includes what used to be my grandad’s house – nostalgia!
I wonder how they can enforce this, if at all.
[deleted]
I have stayed in Whitby a few times, absolutely love the place. And it does seem that there are a lot of properties to choose from when looking for a holiday rental. Not sure how the locals are supposed to find somewhere to live if all the property gets bought up by people using it for holiday lets.
I wonder how this will actually be enforced. I gather there will be some way easy of circumventing it via proxy ownership.
This situation is destroying small towns around the country. In our town in Somerset some rich lady from london bought one of the best house/shop plots on our small shopping street and has left it empty for over two years. 2nd home owners don’t care about the communities they buy in only to see profits over the years for themselves.
Thank Christ, now can this be everywhere in the UK please? the only thing that is rising faster than house prices due to buy to let, pull the ladder up pricks is my contempt for them.
Wouldn’t this make the rental market even crazier?
Similar to how oil price rocketted after Russian oil was banned.
Oh god no. Its a really good idea. Worse, this is a “proper, common sense” “nooo nonsense” “Yorkshire doing it right” thing to do.
We’re never going to hear the end of this.
We need to roll this out nationwide now!
Seems a good move. When you go to a BBQ theres a general rule that noone goes and gets food a second time until everyones done it once. Seems the way housing should be.
Dracula: “la naiba.”
It’s not *second* home ownership that’s the issue. It’s *third*, *fourth* and *fifth* home ownership that’s the problem. It’s *corporate* ownership that’s the problem.
Housing bening swallowed up by Landlords is a massive issue, there are whole apartment blocks being built here in Manchester that are specifically advertised as buy to let, even has yield calculations right there in the advert.
Not one unit being sold normally, its a disgrace, I know of at least one other block that was built a few years ago that is entirely owned by a pension company as an “investment”
I understand that rents work for some if they plan to move on for work reasons or whatever, but entire blocks and estates being marketed in this way is disgusting.
Even in a town like Bolton (no offence to Bolton) that’s much smaller planning permission is being granted to turn houses into multiple occupancy housing ie divided up into multiple bedsits by owners that live in totally different cities.
As someone that ended up buying a small one bed apartment in a slightly less desirable area as it was all I could afford, this needs to stop. The more taxes/cost we can add to Landlords that own multiple properties the better imo.
I would include anything above two or more to take into account people that have inheritance homes that people may not be ready to move into yet.
All rented houses should be passed to Council to run and maintain etc as ive never met a honest landlord, ever. The Council should set the rent too etc.
I’m not sure this will work as the tenant could resell their full time home to a holiday let buyer who would appeal the unreasonable restrictive covenants. It would be interesting to see how the Lands Chamber view it as it isn’t obsolete but could be seen as unreasonable.
Folk will just have a LTD company own the home and submit a return each year and problem solved. It wont change a thing.
Revolt!!!!!
Out of interest, how would a ruling like this affect the ownership of a property rented out for self-catering holidays?
Can’t decide if that’s another part of the problem.
Nothing quite like asking the government to give itself more power.
“A whopping 2,111 voters agreed to the proposal compared to 157 people against.”
I’m guessing there would’ve been more against votes but the “residents” weren’t there. Ironic
The first step is not to “sell off” all of the council housing to private “charity” entities… Oh failed on that score… Typical Tory thing.
I would note that the vote was on this question:
>Should all new build and additional housing in Whitby parish be restricted to full time local occupation as a primary residence only and forever (in perpetuity)?
So this doesn’t affect anything currently in the town.
I wouldn’t expect this to affect any prices for many years yet. I don’t live in Whitby, but a ways inland, but I go there for a festival each year (covid excepted), and our rent this year for that week has doubled from pre-covid. These prices are pretty much uniform across the town; I’ve not looked at property prices there, but normally I’d expect rental and purchase prices to be somewhat linked.
Second homes are fine, honestly. I mean it might make sense to buy a second home and move into it then sell the first one later. It’s 3rd, 4th and 5th homes that cause problems.
Based. Fuck landlords. Hoarding property in this climate is legitimately a morally wrong thing to do.
As a boomer, 2nd home ownership bans are damn easy to work around. Just buy it in your kids names.
Well, considering one of it’s most notable residents was a blood sucking monster who owned additional property in Transylvania, I’m surprised it took this long.
32 comments
Can we just make it a nationwide thing that second+ homes pay double council tax? If we can’t deter people from doing it (although this will definitely reduce the yield and help) then at least they should be supporting councils.
Also properties left empty should pay a higher rate of tax as well.
The number of rented properties in the U.K. is growing at a far faster rate than the number being built (double in 2019) and accounts for close to a 3rd of all house stock. There’s no point building more £500k houses if the bottom end of the market keeps getting swallowed up by buy to let.
*Edit: got to say I’m really impressed with the quality of responses and discussion from this post, from both people who agree and disagree. I kept it deliberately vague and simple, and the amount of genuinely good points made is really awesome!*
There should be huge restrictions across the country when it comes to owning second homes. All foreign investment in the domestic housing market should be stopped immediately.
You could easily solve the housing crisis, which is far more based on people using property as a hedge rather than an actual shortage.
But let’s not pretend that the so called housing crisis isn’t entirely engineered. It suits the rich and also gives the established classes a sense of smug satisfaction.
So let’s just call it what it is – a state backed Ponzi.
It also serves as a powerful form of social control – the more indebted a population, the less risks they are willing to take on challenging the ruling classes.
So does this stop people from whitby buying second homes elsewhere?
I doubt a local authority can prevent exchanges of title and subsequent registration with the land registry. Perhaps a referendum on devolution of powers would be of more use.
I’d vote for a party in the local elections that does this.
Heck, I’d vote for a party that vows to make the South West (or at least Bristol) secede from the UK and become its own independent state.
I wonder how this will work out. This new rule is only for new builds so my guess is Whitby will suddenly become less appealing to developers. Given the average price is £290k it’s still going to be out of reach for a lot of locals.
This should be everywhere. Here in Cornwall if you’re about to be made homeless you’re screwed. Nowhere to rent and social housing is limited. Yet there are thousands of second homes and air BnBs!
Oh, that picture includes what used to be my grandad’s house – nostalgia!
I wonder how they can enforce this, if at all.
[deleted]
I have stayed in Whitby a few times, absolutely love the place. And it does seem that there are a lot of properties to choose from when looking for a holiday rental. Not sure how the locals are supposed to find somewhere to live if all the property gets bought up by people using it for holiday lets.
I wonder how this will actually be enforced. I gather there will be some way easy of circumventing it via proxy ownership.
This situation is destroying small towns around the country. In our town in Somerset some rich lady from london bought one of the best house/shop plots on our small shopping street and has left it empty for over two years. 2nd home owners don’t care about the communities they buy in only to see profits over the years for themselves.
Thank Christ, now can this be everywhere in the UK please? the only thing that is rising faster than house prices due to buy to let, pull the ladder up pricks is my contempt for them.
Wouldn’t this make the rental market even crazier?
Similar to how oil price rocketted after Russian oil was banned.
Oh god no. Its a really good idea. Worse, this is a “proper, common sense” “nooo nonsense” “Yorkshire doing it right” thing to do.
We’re never going to hear the end of this.
We need to roll this out nationwide now!
Seems a good move. When you go to a BBQ theres a general rule that noone goes and gets food a second time until everyones done it once. Seems the way housing should be.
Dracula: “la naiba.”
It’s not *second* home ownership that’s the issue. It’s *third*, *fourth* and *fifth* home ownership that’s the problem. It’s *corporate* ownership that’s the problem.
Housing bening swallowed up by Landlords is a massive issue, there are whole apartment blocks being built here in Manchester that are specifically advertised as buy to let, even has yield calculations right there in the advert.
Not one unit being sold normally, its a disgrace, I know of at least one other block that was built a few years ago that is entirely owned by a pension company as an “investment”
I understand that rents work for some if they plan to move on for work reasons or whatever, but entire blocks and estates being marketed in this way is disgusting.
Even in a town like Bolton (no offence to Bolton) that’s much smaller planning permission is being granted to turn houses into multiple occupancy housing ie divided up into multiple bedsits by owners that live in totally different cities.
As someone that ended up buying a small one bed apartment in a slightly less desirable area as it was all I could afford, this needs to stop. The more taxes/cost we can add to Landlords that own multiple properties the better imo.
I would include anything above two or more to take into account people that have inheritance homes that people may not be ready to move into yet.
All rented houses should be passed to Council to run and maintain etc as ive never met a honest landlord, ever. The Council should set the rent too etc.
I’m not sure this will work as the tenant could resell their full time home to a holiday let buyer who would appeal the unreasonable restrictive covenants. It would be interesting to see how the Lands Chamber view it as it isn’t obsolete but could be seen as unreasonable.
Folk will just have a LTD company own the home and submit a return each year and problem solved. It wont change a thing.
Revolt!!!!!
Out of interest, how would a ruling like this affect the ownership of a property rented out for self-catering holidays?
Can’t decide if that’s another part of the problem.
Nothing quite like asking the government to give itself more power.
“A whopping 2,111 voters agreed to the proposal compared to 157 people against.”
I’m guessing there would’ve been more against votes but the “residents” weren’t there. Ironic
The first step is not to “sell off” all of the council housing to private “charity” entities… Oh failed on that score… Typical Tory thing.
I would note that the vote was on this question:
>Should all new build and additional housing in Whitby parish be restricted to full time local occupation as a primary residence only and forever (in perpetuity)?
So this doesn’t affect anything currently in the town.
I wouldn’t expect this to affect any prices for many years yet. I don’t live in Whitby, but a ways inland, but I go there for a festival each year (covid excepted), and our rent this year for that week has doubled from pre-covid. These prices are pretty much uniform across the town; I’ve not looked at property prices there, but normally I’d expect rental and purchase prices to be somewhat linked.
Second homes are fine, honestly. I mean it might make sense to buy a second home and move into it then sell the first one later. It’s 3rd, 4th and 5th homes that cause problems.
Based. Fuck landlords. Hoarding property in this climate is legitimately a morally wrong thing to do.
As a boomer, 2nd home ownership bans are damn easy to work around. Just buy it in your kids names.
Well, considering one of it’s most notable residents was a blood sucking monster who owned additional property in Transylvania, I’m surprised it took this long.