In an average working day, Claudia Bowring has to play the role of detective, estate agent, family mediator and, occasionally, grief counsellor.
She’s an empty homes officer for a borough council in the suburbs of Nottingham.
There are just short of 700,000 empty and unfurnished homes in England, according to the most recent government figures, external. Of those, 261,471 are classed as “long-term empty,” meaning no-one has lived there for six months or more.
If all empty homes were brought back into use, the housing crisis would be solved at a stroke and, arguably, the government would not have to build 1.5m new homes.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that. Bringing derelict and abandoned properties back to life can be a long and complex process.
Even finding out who owns properties that have been standing empty for years, or in some cases decades, can be a challenge.
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When persuasion fails, the gloves come off.
Like many local authorities, Conservative-controlled Rushcliffe charges extra council tax on homes that have been unoccupied for more than a year, under the Empty Homes Premium brought in by the previous government.
If that doesn’t do the trick, the council can take enforcement action.
It treats abandoned properties as an environmental health issue - derelict properties can be a magnet for vandalism and vermin, harming the quality of life for people living next to them.
In some cases, the council is able to carry out emergency repair work on abandoned homes, and then force a sale at auction to recover its costs. This sometimes results in a windfall for the owners who were so reluctant to sell up in the first place.
Another tool at the council’s disposal are Empty Dwelling Management Orders, which give councils the right to take over and make repairs to run-down private properties that have been vacant for at least two years. They can rent the property out for up to seven years to recover costs.
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But it does not have to do this. There is no legal requirement for local authorities to bring empty homes back into use – and some councils choose not to.
Should have a tax on empty houses, to dicincentivise land banking with properties that are unoccupied. That could also bring a means to take over properties where the owner is unknown, when the taxes are unpaid long enough.
And a tax on second, third, etc homes. Outside of summer some places are starting to look like a ghost town.
We can, but very few people own a second, let along a third or fourth.
Either they are landlords and running it through a business, and how do you prevent a business from owning two locations?
Sorry Londis, you can only have one store because you have a flat upstairs?
Or they own them privately, and in this country its massively overstated. Presumably to try and start a bit of class warfare, but folks see US news and think it applies here.
Fucking Tories, making the crabs pull everyone back into the bucket when there really aren’t that many. Even Shelter doesn’t call it out as a problem, compared to the many other things we could do to help.
Make short term rental illegal, 100% tax on empty house, boom crisis solved
Making short term rental completely illegal is not a good idea as it would impact on local tourism etc, but they should allow (or force) councils to limit licences for short term rentals to a certain percentage of housing.
There’s hotels for tourists
I wouldn’t visit.
I have two children, and the number of hotels where I can get joining rooms so I dont have to actually share with them is basically zero.
It didn’t prevent tourists from visiting before so I’m sure you would just learn to live with it.
Anyway, short term rental and the abundance of tourists compared to locals caused by short term rentals actually hurts the local economy because it drives out people who are present 24/7 and need non tourist oriented services.
And thats fine. I’m just letting you know how I feel about this.
Banning short term rentals is one thing, but can we please at least request that hotels fill the gap that this creates?
Why stop at short term?
Because some people don’t want to own the place they live in? Heck, I’m one of those, I moved far from where I used to live but knew that it might be temporary (two years max) so you’re saying I should have been forced to buy and be stuck selling it two years later in order to be able to buy something else back home?
Line must go up
Anecdotal of course, but while looking to downsize, we have seen many houses empty for 6+ months due to probate delays, and houses I would not buy for a pound due to the amount of work needed. So not sure how meaningful these stats are.
They have been selling off houses in Liverpool for £1 - rough area and they needed a lot of work doing, plus the Council had a lot of rules in place (so could take it back if the work hadn’t progressed far enough). It seemed a major undertaking but worked for some people.
So these could be houses that people don’t actually want to live in? Maybe because work isn’t there, or the cost of repair too high?
I remember some of those houses, as I was in Wavertree near the Botanic Gardens, Matalan and the burnt down pubs around 2000 and you couldn’t give away some homes just a bit further down Picton.
261,471 are classed as “long-term empty,” meaning no-one has lived there for six months or more.
If all empty homes were brought back into use, the housing crisis would be solved at a stroke and, arguably, the government would not have to build 1.5m new homes.
I know number literacy is not journalism’s strong point, but surely even the author can grasp the basics of “which number is bigger”.
Bringing 0.25 million houses into occupancy does not “arguably” negate the need to build 1.5 million houses. At best it reduces the required new builds to 1.25 million.
The larger figure (700k) is a meaningless figure for this discussion, because short term vacant homes are by definition not a problem that needs to be solved. Most of them will be homes which are vacant “between occupants”, e.g. ones where the tenant has moved out and a new one hasn’t moved in yet, or the homes of the recently deceased whose estate is still in the process of winding up.
Heck, even a proportion of the 250k “long term” ones won’t be actual problem vacancies; some of those will just be ones like those of the recently deceased for whom the process takes longer than 6 months. A relative of mine recently died, and it took maybe 4-5 months to sort out probate, another couple of months on the market before an offer was accepted, and as far as I know now (about 6 months on again) the new owner is still in the process of renovating it prior to moving in. That’s “long term vacant” in those stats, but it’s not a problem that needs anyone to solve it- it’s just that sometimes things take time.
Dealing with genuine long term vacancies is legitimately a worthy pursuit in these times of housing crisis, but pretending that it’s literally the solution to the problem (and not, you know, building stuff) is a cheap dream.
I had this issue with Reddit. You need a lot of houses, making some available doesn’t fix the issue with the vast majority.
And how many of those houses are mouldy, rotten, or otherwise non habitable?
Or in locations people don’t want to live… cause no jobs, or other reasons.
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Job opportunities are much better in the big cities but there is still a lot of demand for housing and inflated prices in the countryside and smaller towns. I’m not an expert but I think the biggest cause is the fact that house prices continue to rise and therefore are an seen as an investment rather than a home, even if they are empty.
No Japan is a monoculture, people move to the cities.
UK is multicultural, people move out of the cities.
Stop building houses, everybody. We can just force the sale or rent of 260,000 homes, completely and permanently solving the housing crisis. I repeat, stop building new houses!
We’re only short by about a million. That’ll fix the problem!
