Saturday, November 1, 2008
What happened to the shortage of supply?
Crisis as 100,000 homes lie empty
More than 100,000 homes are lying empty in Scotland, a report reveals today. Figures compiled by the Bank of Scotland show 101,019 properties are currently vacant - 4.1% of all houses across the country. The Bank of Scotland called on the Government to reduce VAT on renovating vacant properties to make them more attractive to investors, while homeless charity Shelter said Scotland faced a "housing crisis" and demanded more empty homes be brought back in to general use.
Posted by little professor @ 10:00 AM (863 views)
12 thoughts on “What happened to the shortage of supply?”
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mark wadsworth says:
People who’ve allowed houses to become derelict don’t deserve a tax break. They should be beaten into doing up their houses with the Land Value Tax stick.
icarus says:
What was that, Krusty, about too many people chasing too few houses on this crowded little island?
renting2 says:
The argument will be that ‘they’re the wrong sort of houses in the wrong places and that there are not enough of the right sort of houses in the right places’.
enuii says:
We are not talking the picturesque highlands here but the former industrial areas which have suffered badly over the last 30 years or so. I also wonder if the figures also include the huge numbers of derelict council properties deemed as sub-standard and unsuitable for renting.
Mark, would your land value tax apply to local authority housing!
Tonys9168 says:
This is not news, it was well reported earlier this year that there were 600,000 properties across the UK vacant. Generally there probably needs to be some empty properties to allow people to move without one massive chain, but it does need to be discouraged. Its the whole investment against home argument, investors were forcing prices up and gaining money by holding onto property for a while. They sucked money from the economy and contributed nothing.
It does show that there is no home shortage! Not to say there will never be, if we keep growing the population and allocating smaller and smaller amounts of land to development. Any ‘countryside’ complainers should be offered the choice, limits births or shut up.
mark wadsworth says:
@ enuii, the purists say LVT should apply to gummint owned properties, but this seems a bit daft to me, as it would be the LA paying tax to itself. I’d shut down housing associations and either give the properties to the relevant LA or sell them off.
But what would be important is for all State bodies to show the true value of its land and buildings in its accounts and to include the higher of [notional rental income] and [an interest charge of 5% on capital value] both as notional income and a notional expense in its accounts.
E.g. the Town Hall may belong to the council who occupy it rent free, but if the building is worth £10 million and could be rented out for £300,000 a year, the local authority should include £500,000 a year as income and also show it as an expense. So if there are twenty civil servants working there, the eagle-eyed local taxpayer/voter would ask the council why they don’t relocate somewhere cheaper and rent out the building or indeed sell it off.
malct says:
Bid to cut number of empty homes
Last Updated: Saturday, 01 November 2008, 08:28 GMT- Search: Empty houses report
Over quarter of a million private homes empty in England last yearMore than a quarter of a million private homes stood empty in England last year, a report has revealed.
The survey by the bank Halifax found 279,281 private homes had been empty for at least six months in April 2007 – although this was 9% lower than the 308,438 recorded in April 2003.
Halifax called on the Government to make tax changes to encourage a reduction in empty homes, which the survey found were more common in deprived areas.
The North West had the highest number in the recent survey, at 61,450, accounting for 22% of all the empty homes in England. In 17 local authorities (LAs), 3% or more of homes stood empty, while the average for England as a whole was 1.5%.
http://news.aol.co.uk/bid-to-cut-number-of-empty/article/20081031201740153807475
malct says:
Halifax, which is part of the HBOS group, would like the Government to extend the 5% rate of VAT for restoring an empty home to all properties vacant for more than 6 months, not just those properties that have been unoccupied for more than two years. The bank thinks this would provide a more level playing field between individuals and local authorities, which typically do not pay VAT on renovation activities.
Currently, 17.5% VAT is payable for renovating an empty home vacant for less than two years. This means the average VAT payment for restoring such a home is £5,234 – which is three-and-a-half times more than the payment on restoring a home vacant for more than two years, Halifax estimated. “We want a blanket 5% rate to remove the incentive for homes to be left empty”, Mr Thiru said.
http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2008/11/01/bid-to-cut-number-of-empty-homes-55578-22161325/
malct says:
East Kent initiative
Report an Empty Property
Please use the form below to report empty property in your area.
Name
Your address
Post code
Telephone
Email
Are you The owner
A neighbour
Other:
(please specify)
Address of empty property
General information about the property
http://www.no-use-empty.org/4_ReportAnEmptyProperty.html
Fjcruiser says:
on a channel 4 program recently, the reporter mentioned there was about 800,000 empty properties in the UK. We were shown pictures of entire areas near Liverpool of empty properties. There were like ghost towns. Of course this would probably include properties which are unsuitable for living but still…..It was shocking to hear such a large figure.
planning4acrash says:
Malct@9, that is bad news, we don’t want local government buying derelict houses at “market prices”, artificially inflating them, and they make terrible land lords. Just let the market tank, and we can get on with the business of buying them.
icarus says:
renting2 @2 – the reply to that would be that the homeless would not be too fussy about where they lived or that some policy could help regenerate whole areas. The counter-argument that the homeless cannot afford to buy anything brings us neatly back to the fallacy in Krusty’s argument – there’s demand and then there’s effective demand (i.e. people with money to spend).