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Amen to this. Two case studies from the UK I've been thinking about recently: 1) Visiting London and spending time in South Kensington - walking back to hotel

by dmje 5y ago

Amen to this. Two case studies from the UK I've been thinking about recently: 1) Visiting London and spending time in South Kensington - walking back to hotel at night, only about 30% of houses had any lights on. Suggestion is the others are effectively uninhabited, and a search on RightMove shows properties sell for £20-£30m for a 4/5 bed. This isn't normal Londoners, it's outside investment. 2) Cornwall, where I live - an insane house price rise over lockdown as city dwellers aim for the beautiful bits of the country. Literally no way now you could afford your first home round here on minimum wage, and some towns have a high (>50) % holiday or second homes. It's an untenable situation. I think my generation (I'm nearly 50) are probably the last to be able to afford their own home on anything other than a massive wage. Round here in Cornwall the jobs are things like surf instructor, supermarket worker, barperson, etc. That's not gonna stretch to the local house prices.

anothernewdude 5y ago
Those empty homes should be torn down or squatted in. I imagine an organisation like a squatters union could be set up to manage protection for them.
- csomar 5y ago
  Sure. Let's fix a housing crisis by completely breaking up laws, society and order.
  - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
    It's not uncommon for cities to pas laws that aim at the reduction of unoccupied spaces amid housing crisis. Actually, most European capitals do this either by raising taxes on empty housing or by partially legalizing squatting. Londongrad is an exception to what is otherwise a rule.
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      Houses that are vacant for a long period attract higher council tax in London and the whole of England. Of course you may argue that the difference is small in relation to multi-million pounds properties, but that is a more general issue with the council tax's range.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Hmm, I’m fairly certain we have some laws giving squatters rights if they live in some housing long enough without opposition.
  - lsiebert 5y ago
    America fixed it's British Colony issue by doing just that.
  - rtpg 5y ago
    Let’s fix a housing crisis by having houses be used. I doubt this is the magical unique problem everyone claims it is, but “oh no think of people’s investment” when people are sleeping outside is valuing property over people.
    - CydeWeys 5y ago
      Housing vacancy is essentially a red herring when it comes to the housing crisis. Vacancy rates are still low overall, and reducing vacant housing would barely make a dent in the issue. The real issue is that there isn't enough supply for a given level of demand (i.e. how many people there are who do or would like to live there). Cities have added way more people than they've added housing units over the past several decades.
    - llampx 5y ago
      So would you say the same applies for property which is being underutilized? Throw out the rich people living in 5 bedroom houses? Throw out the grandmas living in the house they once had a family and children in? Mandate minimum number of persons per square foot?
  - Quarrelsome 5y ago
    squatting is a "solution" to empty houses. Its not a good solution but it certainly draws attention to the issue.
  - throwaway2048 5y ago
    I'm not sure society is going to break down if a few empty rich investor properties actually get used.
- valparaiso 5y ago
  Squatters should be shot dead.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
Vacant properties in London are a red herring. Last time I checked official number they accounted for 1% of the housing stock, bearing in mind that a number of properties are always being refurbished at any given time. In general it does not make sense to keep a property empty unless perhaps it is an extreme luxury one. South Kensington is one of the most expensive area of London and not representative at all. Whatever happens there does not affect the average person, and quite of few of the grand houses there are also actually offices. In any case, it is not true that 30% of homes are empty there. Apparently the City of London (i.e. the square mile, not London as a whole) has the highest rate in the country and that is still only about 4% [1]. In Cornwall the issue is quite different: The area is very attractive for second homes and, at the same time, it is the second poorest region in all of Northern Europe. This means that local resident have a very low purchasing power and indeed cannot compete with people from London and the South East. I think that they are starting to implement restrictions in some areas in order to give priorities to buyers who will occupy the property as their main residence in order to keep second homes in check. [1] https://www.cityam.com/15bn-worth-of-london-homes-sit-empty-as-londoners-squabble-over-supply/ https://www.cityam.com/15bn-worth-of-london-homes-sit-empty-...
- dogma1138 5y ago
  The median price for a property in London is £600K, the average is over £1M today. That means that normal people cannot afford to buy anything in London even with HTB which is a terrible policy the people who can afford to use it are already in the top percentiles. A £600K property as a first time buyer requires you to have about £100K to get on a property ladder. 10% deposit for a 90% LTV mortgage is £60K, stamp duty is £17,500 (£20K from end of Sep 21) that’s already ~£80,000 then you have mortgage fees, legal fees, furnishing costs (since new builds don’t even come with blinds)… The average salary in London is £41K, that leaves you with take home pay of about £30K after tax (if you have no student loans). So a house hold of two people living in London has about £60K per year if both earn the average pay, £25K or more of which would go to rent per year, another £4000 will go to various utility bills and council tax, another 5-5.5K would go for travel (assuming you live within zone 1-4), then you have food, clothing and other living expenses, so if you are somehow lucky and can save up £10K per year that’s 10 years to save up enough for a median property which is most likely a 54 sq/m flat. Add kids to this mix and well you are royally fucked.
___luigi 5y ago
> walking back to hotel at night, only about 30% of houses had any lights on. I wish a data scientist at utilities (water, electricity and gas) providers pick up this line and provide some statistics on this. I wish also that city-services companies (e.g. Electricity/water/parking service provider) can collaborate to provide better and justified policy making. I did similar studies based on open data to provide insights on road/sidewalk optimization usage, and I still see value in collaboration with policy makers.
- mordae 5y ago
  Pirates tried to investigate the situation from this angle only to be publicly shamed for being commies, spying on people. They only wanted district aggregate statistics.
- spangry 5y ago
  There's an organisation called Prosper Australia that does analysis of 'speculative vacancies' in Melbourne using water consumption data: https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Prosper_SpeculativeVacancies_FINAL_web23.pdf https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Prospe...
ed_blackburn 5y ago
Another Cornishman here (Par). The financial destitution and how much harder they have to work for the same things I do in the South East is unsustainable. Cornwall has Luther to the right politically and that’s because there’s been some useful scapegoats. Now those scapegoats have been slain and things are getting worse not better I hope we’ll see policies that are focused on root cause issues instead of ideology (left or right). Property is an obvious example. Dormant second home now means the Cornish rent or live in low quality new build accommodation (hello Wainhomes) but when communities are hollowed out and empty through winter local businesses fail and the destitution affects even the pretty locations. Those people wonder what happened to the quaint fishing village their second home is in. Why is cafe closed, the nearest shop a supermarket that is a 30 min drive away. Why is their a drug problem? Why are the pins all boarded up etc etc. I hope Cornwall and it’s political representatives can act before the bust comes and find a balance between tourism and building sustainable local businesses in different sectors. The obvious place to start is accommodation. If people cannot put a roof over their head how can a community function least of all an economy.
- makomk 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the British press and all the wealthy people with second homes still have Brexit as a scapegoat for why cafes and shops in tourist destinations can't find staff. Never mind the fact that AirBNB and second homes have pushed up house prices and rents to the point that it's impossible to live there on the kind of pay those jobs have, according to the media it's all the fault of Brexit driving away the foreign workers who had to do the jobs because all the Brexit-voting morons who were brainwashed into blaming the EU are too lazy to do them.
  - ForHackernews 5y ago
    That's a self-correcting problem, isn't it? Either those cafes and shops will raise prices and pay their staff more, or they'll close down. I've never understood why we're supposed to feel bad for "small business owners" who won't find staff when paying peanuts for their crappy jobs.
toomanybeersies 5y ago
Has it ever been possible to buy a house on minimum wage?
- lsiebert 5y ago
  Yes, depending on where you buy. Many homes are much cheaper outside of major cities.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    That’d have to be a £60k house.
    - taffronaut 5y ago
      They do exist. If you can work remotely or don't mind the commute to Cardiff - welcome to Merthyr! https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=75365154&sale=12284074&country=england https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html...
      - sideshowb 5y ago
        Not a very popular view among the Valleys LAs though who aspire to be something other than dormitories for Cardiff
    - kingludite 5y ago
      40 years ago some family homes in NL cost 35 k guilders or 16 k euro. 2 floors, 2 bedrooms, front and back yard.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Yes. I even knew welfare recepients who bought a property while on welfare. Pepperidge farms remembers.
traceroute66 5y ago
> spending time in South Kensington - walking back to hotel at night, only about 30% of houses had any lights on. South Kensington is a bit of a curiosity. It is predominantly bordered by Chelsea and Knightsbridge. Chelsea is Russian country, if you are a wealthy Russian, Chelsea is the place to be. Unless you are a Russian oligarch, in which case there are one or two spots a bit further away where you can splash super serious cash on rarer properties. Knightsbridge is wealthy Arab country, when it gets too hot in the Middle East summer, they flock to Knightsbridge with their imported Ferraris to stay in their London houses. But South Kensington is a bit different. Its not attractive to the Russians or Arabs. Not many of the properties there remain single occupant, they've been mostly subdivided in to individual flats or re-purposed for office (or educational use ... there are lots of cram-schools, colleges and nurseries round there).
- OJFord 5y ago
  Yeah a lot are not residential, a lot of those that are are subdivided into flats, and a chunk of those that remain may just not be occupied outside term time or during a pandemic. But mostly it's that they're not residential to begin with. Many more are linked to an embassy, restaurants, clubs, nurseries, storage, etc. than you'd realise from 'walking back to hotel at night'.
- yawaworht1978 5y ago
  What about Notting hill, a bedsit can go for 2000 quid per week there, it's in Kensington. Average London rent prices are 1600 quid, that is before council tax, internet and the dreaded tv licence. A more granular overview is Location Studio One bedroom Kensington and Chelsea £1,427 £2,062 Islington £1,383 £1,565 Tower Hamlets £1,398 £1,547 Westminster £1,371 £2,113 Lambeth £1,240 £1,595 One bedroom is not sufficient to raise a family, I think that's safe to say. So let's move on to the 2 and 3 bedroom properties Location Ttwo br 3Wbr swestmisnster£ 2,920 £4,152 Camden £ 2,254 £2,880 Kensingtonelsea £3,030 £4,938 Islington £1,934 £2,487 Hammersmith a 1,922 £2,653 Sorry for the formatting. Cheapest BBexley£. 1,105 £1,281 Havering £1,120 £1,384 Redbridge £1,293 £1,589 Sutton £ 1,163 £1,498 Waltham Forest £1,364 £1,649 These are before council tax and other costs, which are gonna be laughed at by oligarchs but they do count for normal people. The new houses nnextto Westfield shopping centre cost around 2000 quid before council tax , zone 3 classic houses with a garden go for 1500 before council tax. its really bad in all London, unless you make 50k after taxes and most devs don't make that money there. t
saddlerustle 5y ago
Your first point is a misleading anecdote given there's actually data on this. The amount of empty homes in London is at a historical low [1]. Broadly, cities with the highest amount of empty homes tend to have the most affordable housing, because obviously that indicates there's more than enough housing to go round. [1] https://i.imgur.com/jX1OpmS.png https://i.imgur.com/jX1OpmS.png
- brailsafe 5y ago
  True, but citing data from 2017 is also a little misleading, considering theirs was a very recent anecdote. It's still probably relevant though.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  It also depends what we call "empty house". Your link doesn't provide a definition. Is a house occupied a few weeks a year considered empty?
- throw0101a 5y ago
  Contra: > The Square Mile has the highest percentage of empty homes in the entire country, fresh data states. > Some 42.4 properties per 1,000 sit unused in the City of London, leaving it top of the charts and the only London authority to feature in the nationwide top 10. > Data compiled by insurer Admiral also shows that as many as 29,242 London homes have been unoccupied for at least six months, to a collective value of roughly £15 billion. * https://www.citymatters.london/vacant-homes-city-london/ https://www.citymatters.london/vacant-homes-city-london/
  - marcinzm 5y ago
    4.2% is a lot less than 70%.
    - Freak_NL 5y ago
      That's because real vacancy (as in, untenanted) only makes up a small percentage of the empty houses. The rest are owned by wealthy foreigners who reside there a few weeks in the summer and leave it to the care of a caretaker (who does not live there of course) for the rest of the year. Some of the obscenely wealthy may even have a live in concierge who lives in his own rooms keeping the rest of the house ready for its owners all year round.
rocqua 5y ago
Note, this targets anyone buying houses to rent out. It does not (like london considered) tax un-lived-in houses. This is just a weird bandaid. Mostly trying to blame landlords for this housing crisis when mortgage tax credits, and scarcity due to weird eco regulation shenanigans are to blame.
- iso1210 5y ago
  There aren't mortgage tax credits in the UK, and I have no idea what you mean by "eco regulation shenanigans"
  - rocqua 5y ago
    They are both Dutch situations. The eco regulation shenanigans is about nitrogen emissions. They are limited by European regulations near protected areas. The government ignored and worked around these regulations for a long time. Then environmental parties sued, and we were so far above the limits it was essentially ruled "no more emissions". Whilst building new houses causes a decent amount of emissions. This meant that country wide, getting building permits became almost impossible. This contributed partially to our current housing shortage.
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      The massive shortage existed way before that lawsuit was even in the making.
iso1210 5y ago
> Round here in Cornwall the jobs are things like surf instructor, supermarket worker, barperson, etc. That's not gonna stretch to the local house prices. That was the case. A colleague of mine, originally from St Just, moved to London for work as so many have to do. Another from near Cockermouth did the same. Both now work remotely full time from their 'home towns' on decent wages. Covid has done wonders for local communities - good jobs are now available for people without having to move across the country. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/112353359 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/112353359 for example is under £300k. Assuming you got it for 300k (asking price is 285k) with a 15k deposit you're looking at £1,278.19 a month with nationwide on a 30 year rate, well within the range of a couple earning £35k each, which is a reasonable Now sure if you didn't get the education to get a decent job. Hell even on 25k each, Nationwide can lend upto £275k for a first time buyer - just need that deposit.
- itsdsmurrell 5y ago
  The real problem is how much the bank earns off the interest it charges you throughout your life while it had to do what?... create new money from nothing into the money supply with special permissions given to it by the government. This is why housing is so expensive to begin with. This bullshit needs to stop.
  - himlion 5y ago
    That's a concern after more pressing issues are solved.
  - dan-robertson 5y ago
    Banks don’t get to create money. Quantitive Easing isn’t something banks can call up on demand and it isn’t banks getting loads of free money. Instead they sell certain slightly risky assets to the government at a slightly higher price than they would be worth without QE. This small price difference is the free money but the bigger difference is that the banks have more liquid cash to use for e.g. making loans. I think mortgages are pretty competitive, especially for reasonably well-paid people and there isn’t really that much profit made by the banks (your interest corresponds to inflation and the risk that you default on your loan with the house price having fallen. Money today is worth more than money in 25 years and you have to pay the difference.
headmelted 5y ago
I mean, it’s an easily fixable problem. Punitively heavy land taxes on non-primary dwellings solves this overnight. It also raises a lot of capital that can be used to provide services in the area.
- taffronaut 5y ago
  Unfortunately the wealthy tend not to want to be taxed and they're not averse to fighting back. They've learned that they need to lobby even small local tax-raising authorities to obstruct these kinds of actions. In Wales, local authorities are allowed to raise a local tax premium of up to 100% on holiday homes [1], but few, if any, charge a premium of more than 50%, even in affected areas considered to be in crisis. There's also a loophole that a second home can be declared as a holiday rental property business, without any real intention of letting it out. Welsh authorities work hard to police this by asking to review evidence of lettings (I know this as I own a legit holiday rental property in an affected area) but the enforcers need extra funding to police the tax dodgers. I don't dispute your underlying point that punitive taxes are a big part of the solution, but I take issue that it's an easy or overnight fix unfortunately because of the interests aligned against imposing them. [1] https://gov.wales/welsh-government-announces-three-pronged-approach-address-second-homes-crisis https://gov.wales/welsh-government-announces-three-pronged-a...
  - imtringued 5y ago
    The fundamental problem isn't that investors vote against land value taxes. The problem is that the small homeowner doesn't want to pay them either so he will vote for the benefit of the investors.
    - 6510 5y ago
      Use the money for a basic income.
- mrjin 5y ago
  Yes and no. Yes, your proposal can solve the problem for sure. No, you just can hardly implement it anytime soon. I'm in Australia and Labor lost last election just because they were swearing to remove so called NG(Negative-Gearing, which allows the property investors to offset their income with losses from investment property) before the ballot day, despite NG itself is actually a bizarre idea: why would tax payers cover the asses of the property investors and what's more, in fair amount of NG claims, the so claimed losses were not actually rendered but rather losses in accounting term. If you opt to a different accounting method, they were actually making a profit. So your proposal will for sure hurt those vested interests, and I would expect it be very hard to pass the parliament. It's great to see Dutch cities actually made that far, I'll keep my eyes wide open to see what's next for them.
heresie-dabord 5y ago
Wages have been stagnant for decades while the cost of living has increased... and now housing has become a privilege. Yes, there are "rich foreigners" and some corporations are strategically acquiring the places and spaces where high rent can be extracted. But what has driven housing cost in the market of individual homes is simply that some citizens can afford to borrow at low rates, and other citizens are seizing the opportunity to realise gains that they could not attain through a lifetime of work, wage increases, and other investing. It is grim to work for years and have nothing else to show for it. Young families, workers, the elderly, and the poor will be unable to afford even tenancy in the big cities. (To turn dark for just a moment, we only really seem to have a plan for the elderly.) The future control of crucial urban voting-blocks in Western democracies will be in the hands of landlords.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  The governments are to blame. If conventional mortgages were capped to 1 per person. And a minimum of 80% ltv was required. Then houses would be cheaper. Instead the government is letting people put low money down, low interest rates, and buy up many houses at once. That of course inflated housing costs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I like this idea. I’d add in though you gotta do something about corporate ownership though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - heresie-dabord 5y ago
    > The governments are to blame. Governments are reluctant to oppose profiteering. And with stagnant wages and rising COL, working people are being squeezed out of ownership. The British band XTC had a prescient song -- "Where did the ordinary people go?" They couldn't afford to live in their hometowns anymore!
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Not sure why the amen is applicable to Dutch cities. I'll take the local perspective from Amsterdam as an example, but it applies more broadly to the other cities as well here. Regarding point 1: There's no real issues with long-term vacancies (the municipality already has laws in-place which fine owners of vacant homes), typically sits between 1 and 2%. That should obviously go down to 0 as much as possible, but it's clear that (1) the problem has an extremely minor effect on the market, (2) it's not exclusively caused by investors, a lot of them are pied-a-terres or homes owned by temporary migrants working abroad and (3) the problem of vacant homes that can be attributed to investors, can be addressed in many other ways than a total ban. In other words, not an effective or suitable policy on this point. Regarding point 2: The price increases aren't caused by investors in Amsterdam, studies have shown this over and over again. If buy-to-let is banned, rental supply drops, rental prices go in overdrive, and there'll be more pressure to buy under any circumstance. The have-nots who're unable to buy will be even worse off. There's no magical panacea to a lack of sufficient supply. You mention a couple points around 2nd homes, which are fair. I think in a world where there isn't enough housing for everyone, we should at minimum disincentivize owning second homes that go unused most of the time. But apart from the fact that Amsterdam is the capital, a working town, not a place where people have second homes that they enjoy on the weekend, this policy doesn't address 2nd homes at all. You're not banned from buying and owning a 2nd home in Amsterdam after this policy goes into effect. In other words, an entirely ineffective policy regarding point 2.
- belter 5y ago
  The problem is not only in Amsterdam, and for anybody wondering how crazy the situation is at the moment this is a realistic, up to date view: "The WILD Dutch housing market and our home buying flop | American in the Netherlands" https://youtu.be/dFXsfeEEVAM https://youtu.be/dFXsfeEEVAM
- einpoklum 5y ago
  > If buy-to-let is banned, rental supply drops This seems to contradict your earlier claim that: > the municipality already has laws in-place which fine owners of vacant homes
sparks1970 5y ago
South Kensington is also home to Imperial College London. See this map to get a feel for the extent of it in the area: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/visit/public/SouthKensingtonCampus.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/visit/publ... You did explicitly say houses but possibly the area is quieter and less inhabited out of term time.
m0llusk 5y ago
That is a complex problem, though. The main issue is land investment that effectively prevents or greatly limits potential new construction. With new construction thwarted even modest growth over time causes extreme prices per unit. Preventing properties from being treated as bidding chips or bonds issued this could greatly improve the situation, but without addressing land use and land banking then the lack of new construction will continue to unbalance property markets.
icelandicmoss 5y ago
Similar situation for York -- tourist hotspot, a large chunk of the local jobs in tourism/customer service, retail, food service etc. Article in the local press in the last year (which I obviously can't find now) found that something like 95% of the properties on sale were unaffordable on the median wage of a local resident. And then you get articles like this one: https://yorkmix.com/york-is-the-norths-property-hotspot-as-investors-snap-up-homes-to-let/ https://yorkmix.com/york-is-the-norths-property-hotspot-as-i... Funny thing is, this article happens to be a total submarine -- I recognise the development they're describing, it's been there for years and has not sold well (totally overpriced) -- this article and others like it are just an attempt to drum up further demand. Really frustrating that when we have so many people needing housing, homes are built entirely with the objective of selling them to people who already have homes elsewhere! First houses should have priority over second houses please.

by dmje 5y ago

anothernewdude 5y ago

Those empty homes should be torn down or squatted in. I imagine an organisation like a squatters union could be set up to manage protection for them.

csomar 5y ago
Sure. Let's fix a housing crisis by completely breaking up laws, society and order.
- sam_lowry_ 5y ago
  It's not uncommon for cities to pas laws that aim at the reduction of unoccupied spaces amid housing crisis. Actually, most European capitals do this either by raising taxes on empty housing or by partially legalizing squatting. Londongrad is an exception to what is otherwise a rule.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    Houses that are vacant for a long period attract higher council tax in London and the whole of England. Of course you may argue that the difference is small in relation to multi-million pounds properties, but that is a more general issue with the council tax's range.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Hmm, I’m fairly certain we have some laws giving squatters rights if they live in some housing long enough without opposition.
- lsiebert 5y ago
  America fixed it's British Colony issue by doing just that.
- rtpg 5y ago
  Let’s fix a housing crisis by having houses be used. I doubt this is the magical unique problem everyone claims it is, but “oh no think of people’s investment” when people are sleeping outside is valuing property over people.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    Housing vacancy is essentially a red herring when it comes to the housing crisis. Vacancy rates are still low overall, and reducing vacant housing would barely make a dent in the issue. The real issue is that there isn't enough supply for a given level of demand (i.e. how many people there are who do or would like to live there). Cities have added way more people than they've added housing units over the past several decades.
  - llampx 5y ago
    So would you say the same applies for property which is being underutilized? Throw out the rich people living in 5 bedroom houses? Throw out the grandmas living in the house they once had a family and children in? Mandate minimum number of persons per square foot?
- Quarrelsome 5y ago
  squatting is a "solution" to empty houses. Its not a good solution but it certainly draws attention to the issue.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  I'm not sure society is going to break down if a few empty rich investor properties actually get used.
valparaiso 5y ago
Squatters should be shot dead.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

Vacant properties in London are a red herring. Last time I checked official number they accounted for 1% of the housing stock, bearing in mind that a number of properties are always being refurbished at any given time. In general it does not make sense to keep a property empty unless perhaps it is an extreme luxury one. South Kensington is one of the most expensive area of London and not representative at all. Whatever happens there does not affect the average person, and quite of few of the grand houses there are also actually offices. In any case, it is not true that 30% of homes are empty there. Apparently the City of London (i.e. the square mile, not London as a whole) has the highest rate in the country and that is still only about 4% [1]. In Cornwall the issue is quite different: The area is very attractive for second homes and, at the same time, it is the second poorest region in all of Northern Europe. This means that local resident have a very low purchasing power and indeed cannot compete with people from London and the South East. I think that they are starting to implement restrictions in some areas in order to give priorities to buyers who will occupy the property as their main residence in order to keep second homes in check. [1] https://www.cityam.com/15bn-worth-of-london-homes-sit-empty-as-londoners-squabble-over-supply/ https://www.cityam.com/15bn-worth-of-london-homes-sit-empty-...

dogma1138 5y ago
The median price for a property in London is £600K, the average is over £1M today. That means that normal people cannot afford to buy anything in London even with HTB which is a terrible policy the people who can afford to use it are already in the top percentiles. A £600K property as a first time buyer requires you to have about £100K to get on a property ladder. 10% deposit for a 90% LTV mortgage is £60K, stamp duty is £17,500 (£20K from end of Sep 21) that’s already ~£80,000 then you have mortgage fees, legal fees, furnishing costs (since new builds don’t even come with blinds)… The average salary in London is £41K, that leaves you with take home pay of about £30K after tax (if you have no student loans). So a house hold of two people living in London has about £60K per year if both earn the average pay, £25K or more of which would go to rent per year, another £4000 will go to various utility bills and council tax, another 5-5.5K would go for travel (assuming you live within zone 1-4), then you have food, clothing and other living expenses, so if you are somehow lucky and can save up £10K per year that’s 10 years to save up enough for a median property which is most likely a 54 sq/m flat. Add kids to this mix and well you are royally fucked.

___luigi 5y ago

> walking back to hotel at night, only about 30% of houses had any lights on. I wish a data scientist at utilities (water, electricity and gas) providers pick up this line and provide some statistics on this. I wish also that city-services companies (e.g. Electricity/water/parking service provider) can collaborate to provide better and justified policy making. I did similar studies based on open data to provide insights on road/sidewalk optimization usage, and I still see value in collaboration with policy makers.

mordae 5y ago
Pirates tried to investigate the situation from this angle only to be publicly shamed for being commies, spying on people. They only wanted district aggregate statistics.
spangry 5y ago
There's an organisation called Prosper Australia that does analysis of 'speculative vacancies' in Melbourne using water consumption data: https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Prosper_SpeculativeVacancies_FINAL_web23.pdf https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Prospe...

ed_blackburn 5y ago

Another Cornishman here (Par). The financial destitution and how much harder they have to work for the same things I do in the South East is unsustainable. Cornwall has Luther to the right politically and that’s because there’s been some useful scapegoats. Now those scapegoats have been slain and things are getting worse not better I hope we’ll see policies that are focused on root cause issues instead of ideology (left or right). Property is an obvious example. Dormant second home now means the Cornish rent or live in low quality new build accommodation (hello Wainhomes) but when communities are hollowed out and empty through winter local businesses fail and the destitution affects even the pretty locations. Those people wonder what happened to the quaint fishing village their second home is in. Why is cafe closed, the nearest shop a supermarket that is a 30 min drive away. Why is their a drug problem? Why are the pins all boarded up etc etc. I hope Cornwall and it’s political representatives can act before the bust comes and find a balance between tourism and building sustainable local businesses in different sectors. The obvious place to start is accommodation. If people cannot put a roof over their head how can a community function least of all an economy.

makomk 5y ago
Unfortunately, the British press and all the wealthy people with second homes still have Brexit as a scapegoat for why cafes and shops in tourist destinations can't find staff. Never mind the fact that AirBNB and second homes have pushed up house prices and rents to the point that it's impossible to live there on the kind of pay those jobs have, according to the media it's all the fault of Brexit driving away the foreign workers who had to do the jobs because all the Brexit-voting morons who were brainwashed into blaming the EU are too lazy to do them.
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  That's a self-correcting problem, isn't it? Either those cafes and shops will raise prices and pay their staff more, or they'll close down. I've never understood why we're supposed to feel bad for "small business owners" who won't find staff when paying peanuts for their crappy jobs.

toomanybeersies 5y ago

Has it ever been possible to buy a house on minimum wage?

lsiebert 5y ago
Yes, depending on where you buy. Many homes are much cheaper outside of major cities.
- deleted 5y ago
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- chrisseaton 5y ago
  That’d have to be a £60k house.
  - taffronaut 5y ago
    They do exist. If you can work remotely or don't mind the commute to Cardiff - welcome to Merthyr! https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=75365154&sale=12284074&country=england https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html...
    - sideshowb 5y ago
      Not a very popular view among the Valleys LAs though who aspire to be something other than dormitories for Cardiff
  - kingludite 5y ago
    40 years ago some family homes in NL cost 35 k guilders or 16 k euro. 2 floors, 2 bedrooms, front and back yard.
inter_netuser 5y ago
Yes. I even knew welfare recepients who bought a property while on welfare. Pepperidge farms remembers.

traceroute66 5y ago

> spending time in South Kensington - walking back to hotel at night, only about 30% of houses had any lights on. South Kensington is a bit of a curiosity. It is predominantly bordered by Chelsea and Knightsbridge. Chelsea is Russian country, if you are a wealthy Russian, Chelsea is the place to be. Unless you are a Russian oligarch, in which case there are one or two spots a bit further away where you can splash super serious cash on rarer properties. Knightsbridge is wealthy Arab country, when it gets too hot in the Middle East summer, they flock to Knightsbridge with their imported Ferraris to stay in their London houses. But South Kensington is a bit different. Its not attractive to the Russians or Arabs. Not many of the properties there remain single occupant, they've been mostly subdivided in to individual flats or re-purposed for office (or educational use ... there are lots of cram-schools, colleges and nurseries round there).

OJFord 5y ago
Yeah a lot are not residential, a lot of those that are are subdivided into flats, and a chunk of those that remain may just not be occupied outside term time or during a pandemic. But mostly it's that they're not residential to begin with. Many more are linked to an embassy, restaurants, clubs, nurseries, storage, etc. than you'd realise from 'walking back to hotel at night'.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
What about Notting hill, a bedsit can go for 2000 quid per week there, it's in Kensington. Average London rent prices are 1600 quid, that is before council tax, internet and the dreaded tv licence. A more granular overview is Location Studio One bedroom Kensington and Chelsea £1,427 £2,062 Islington £1,383 £1,565 Tower Hamlets £1,398 £1,547 Westminster £1,371 £2,113 Lambeth £1,240 £1,595 One bedroom is not sufficient to raise a family, I think that's safe to say. So let's move on to the 2 and 3 bedroom properties Location Ttwo br 3Wbr swestmisnster£ 2,920 £4,152 Camden £ 2,254 £2,880 Kensingtonelsea £3,030 £4,938 Islington £1,934 £2,487 Hammersmith a 1,922 £2,653 Sorry for the formatting. Cheapest BBexley£. 1,105 £1,281 Havering £1,120 £1,384 Redbridge £1,293 £1,589 Sutton £ 1,163 £1,498 Waltham Forest £1,364 £1,649 These are before council tax and other costs, which are gonna be laughed at by oligarchs but they do count for normal people. The new houses nnextto Westfield shopping centre cost around 2000 quid before council tax , zone 3 classic houses with a garden go for 1500 before council tax. its really bad in all London, unless you make 50k after taxes and most devs don't make that money there. t

saddlerustle 5y ago

Your first point is a misleading anecdote given there's actually data on this. The amount of empty homes in London is at a historical low [1]. Broadly, cities with the highest amount of empty homes tend to have the most affordable housing, because obviously that indicates there's more than enough housing to go round. [1] https://i.imgur.com/jX1OpmS.png https://i.imgur.com/jX1OpmS.png

brailsafe 5y ago
True, but citing data from 2017 is also a little misleading, considering theirs was a very recent anecdote. It's still probably relevant though.
yodsanklai 5y ago
It also depends what we call "empty house". Your link doesn't provide a definition. Is a house occupied a few weeks a year considered empty?
throw0101a 5y ago
Contra: > The Square Mile has the highest percentage of empty homes in the entire country, fresh data states. > Some 42.4 properties per 1,000 sit unused in the City of London, leaving it top of the charts and the only London authority to feature in the nationwide top 10. > Data compiled by insurer Admiral also shows that as many as 29,242 London homes have been unoccupied for at least six months, to a collective value of roughly £15 billion. * https://www.citymatters.london/vacant-homes-city-london/ https://www.citymatters.london/vacant-homes-city-london/
- marcinzm 5y ago
  4.2% is a lot less than 70%.
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    That's because real vacancy (as in, untenanted) only makes up a small percentage of the empty houses. The rest are owned by wealthy foreigners who reside there a few weeks in the summer and leave it to the care of a caretaker (who does not live there of course) for the rest of the year. Some of the obscenely wealthy may even have a live in concierge who lives in his own rooms keeping the rest of the house ready for its owners all year round.

rocqua 5y ago

Note, this targets anyone buying houses to rent out. It does not (like london considered) tax un-lived-in houses. This is just a weird bandaid. Mostly trying to blame landlords for this housing crisis when mortgage tax credits, and scarcity due to weird eco regulation shenanigans are to blame.

iso1210 5y ago
There aren't mortgage tax credits in the UK, and I have no idea what you mean by "eco regulation shenanigans"
- rocqua 5y ago
  They are both Dutch situations. The eco regulation shenanigans is about nitrogen emissions. They are limited by European regulations near protected areas. The government ignored and worked around these regulations for a long time. Then environmental parties sued, and we were so far above the limits it was essentially ruled "no more emissions". Whilst building new houses causes a decent amount of emissions. This meant that country wide, getting building permits became almost impossible. This contributed partially to our current housing shortage.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    The massive shortage existed way before that lawsuit was even in the making.

iso1210 5y ago

> Round here in Cornwall the jobs are things like surf instructor, supermarket worker, barperson, etc. That's not gonna stretch to the local house prices. That was the case. A colleague of mine, originally from St Just, moved to London for work as so many have to do. Another from near Cockermouth did the same. Both now work remotely full time from their 'home towns' on decent wages. Covid has done wonders for local communities - good jobs are now available for people without having to move across the country. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/112353359 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/112353359 for example is under £300k. Assuming you got it for 300k (asking price is 285k) with a 15k deposit you're looking at £1,278.19 a month with nationwide on a 30 year rate, well within the range of a couple earning £35k each, which is a reasonable Now sure if you didn't get the education to get a decent job. Hell even on 25k each, Nationwide can lend upto £275k for a first time buyer - just need that deposit.

itsdsmurrell 5y ago
The real problem is how much the bank earns off the interest it charges you throughout your life while it had to do what?... create new money from nothing into the money supply with special permissions given to it by the government. This is why housing is so expensive to begin with. This bullshit needs to stop.
- himlion 5y ago
  That's a concern after more pressing issues are solved.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  Banks don’t get to create money. Quantitive Easing isn’t something banks can call up on demand and it isn’t banks getting loads of free money. Instead they sell certain slightly risky assets to the government at a slightly higher price than they would be worth without QE. This small price difference is the free money but the bigger difference is that the banks have more liquid cash to use for e.g. making loans. I think mortgages are pretty competitive, especially for reasonably well-paid people and there isn’t really that much profit made by the banks (your interest corresponds to inflation and the risk that you default on your loan with the house price having fallen. Money today is worth more than money in 25 years and you have to pay the difference.

headmelted 5y ago

I mean, it’s an easily fixable problem. Punitively heavy land taxes on non-primary dwellings solves this overnight. It also raises a lot of capital that can be used to provide services in the area.

taffronaut 5y ago
Unfortunately the wealthy tend not to want to be taxed and they're not averse to fighting back. They've learned that they need to lobby even small local tax-raising authorities to obstruct these kinds of actions. In Wales, local authorities are allowed to raise a local tax premium of up to 100% on holiday homes [1], but few, if any, charge a premium of more than 50%, even in affected areas considered to be in crisis. There's also a loophole that a second home can be declared as a holiday rental property business, without any real intention of letting it out. Welsh authorities work hard to police this by asking to review evidence of lettings (I know this as I own a legit holiday rental property in an affected area) but the enforcers need extra funding to police the tax dodgers. I don't dispute your underlying point that punitive taxes are a big part of the solution, but I take issue that it's an easy or overnight fix unfortunately because of the interests aligned against imposing them. [1] https://gov.wales/welsh-government-announces-three-pronged-approach-address-second-homes-crisis https://gov.wales/welsh-government-announces-three-pronged-a...
- imtringued 5y ago
  The fundamental problem isn't that investors vote against land value taxes. The problem is that the small homeowner doesn't want to pay them either so he will vote for the benefit of the investors.
  - 6510 5y ago
    Use the money for a basic income.
mrjin 5y ago
Yes and no. Yes, your proposal can solve the problem for sure. No, you just can hardly implement it anytime soon. I'm in Australia and Labor lost last election just because they were swearing to remove so called NG(Negative-Gearing, which allows the property investors to offset their income with losses from investment property) before the ballot day, despite NG itself is actually a bizarre idea: why would tax payers cover the asses of the property investors and what's more, in fair amount of NG claims, the so claimed losses were not actually rendered but rather losses in accounting term. If you opt to a different accounting method, they were actually making a profit. So your proposal will for sure hurt those vested interests, and I would expect it be very hard to pass the parliament. It's great to see Dutch cities actually made that far, I'll keep my eyes wide open to see what's next for them.

heresie-dabord 5y ago

Wages have been stagnant for decades while the cost of living has increased... and now housing has become a privilege. Yes, there are "rich foreigners" and some corporations are strategically acquiring the places and spaces where high rent can be extracted. But what has driven housing cost in the market of individual homes is simply that some citizens can afford to borrow at low rates, and other citizens are seizing the opportunity to realise gains that they could not attain through a lifetime of work, wage increases, and other investing. It is grim to work for years and have nothing else to show for it. Young families, workers, the elderly, and the poor will be unable to afford even tenancy in the big cities. (To turn dark for just a moment, we only really seem to have a plan for the elderly.) The future control of crucial urban voting-blocks in Western democracies will be in the hands of landlords.

bushbaba 5y ago
The governments are to blame. If conventional mortgages were capped to 1 per person. And a minimum of 80% ltv was required. Then houses would be cheaper. Instead the government is letting people put low money down, low interest rates, and buy up many houses at once. That of course inflated housing costs.
- deleted 5y ago
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- ericmay 5y ago
  I like this idea. I’d add in though you gotta do something about corporate ownership though.
- deleted 5y ago
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- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  > The governments are to blame. Governments are reluctant to oppose profiteering. And with stagnant wages and rising COL, working people are being squeezed out of ownership. The British band XTC had a prescient song -- "Where did the ordinary people go?" They couldn't afford to live in their hometowns anymore!

IkmoIkmo 5y ago

Not sure why the amen is applicable to Dutch cities. I'll take the local perspective from Amsterdam as an example, but it applies more broadly to the other cities as well here. Regarding point 1: There's no real issues with long-term vacancies (the municipality already has laws in-place which fine owners of vacant homes), typically sits between 1 and 2%. That should obviously go down to 0 as much as possible, but it's clear that (1) the problem has an extremely minor effect on the market, (2) it's not exclusively caused by investors, a lot of them are pied-a-terres or homes owned by temporary migrants working abroad and (3) the problem of vacant homes that can be attributed to investors, can be addressed in many other ways than a total ban. In other words, not an effective or suitable policy on this point. Regarding point 2: The price increases aren't caused by investors in Amsterdam, studies have shown this over and over again. If buy-to-let is banned, rental supply drops, rental prices go in overdrive, and there'll be more pressure to buy under any circumstance. The have-nots who're unable to buy will be even worse off. There's no magical panacea to a lack of sufficient supply. You mention a couple points around 2nd homes, which are fair. I think in a world where there isn't enough housing for everyone, we should at minimum disincentivize owning second homes that go unused most of the time. But apart from the fact that Amsterdam is the capital, a working town, not a place where people have second homes that they enjoy on the weekend, this policy doesn't address 2nd homes at all. You're not banned from buying and owning a 2nd home in Amsterdam after this policy goes into effect. In other words, an entirely ineffective policy regarding point 2.

belter 5y ago
The problem is not only in Amsterdam, and for anybody wondering how crazy the situation is at the moment this is a realistic, up to date view: "The WILD Dutch housing market and our home buying flop | American in the Netherlands" https://youtu.be/dFXsfeEEVAM https://youtu.be/dFXsfeEEVAM
einpoklum 5y ago
> If buy-to-let is banned, rental supply drops This seems to contradict your earlier claim that: > the municipality already has laws in-place which fine owners of vacant homes

sparks1970 5y ago

South Kensington is also home to Imperial College London. See this map to get a feel for the extent of it in the area: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/visit/public/SouthKensingtonCampus.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/visit/publ... You did explicitly say houses but possibly the area is quieter and less inhabited out of term time.

m0llusk 5y ago

That is a complex problem, though. The main issue is land investment that effectively prevents or greatly limits potential new construction. With new construction thwarted even modest growth over time causes extreme prices per unit. Preventing properties from being treated as bidding chips or bonds issued this could greatly improve the situation, but without addressing land use and land banking then the lack of new construction will continue to unbalance property markets.

icelandicmoss 5y ago

Similar situation for York -- tourist hotspot, a large chunk of the local jobs in tourism/customer service, retail, food service etc. Article in the local press in the last year (which I obviously can't find now) found that something like 95% of the properties on sale were unaffordable on the median wage of a local resident. And then you get articles like this one: https://yorkmix.com/york-is-the-norths-property-hotspot-as-investors-snap-up-homes-to-let/ https://yorkmix.com/york-is-the-norths-property-hotspot-as-i... Funny thing is, this article happens to be a total submarine -- I recognise the development they're describing, it's been there for years and has not sold well (totally overpriced) -- this article and others like it are just an attempt to drum up further demand. Really frustrating that when we have so many people needing housing, homes are built entirely with the objective of selling them to people who already have homes elsewhere! First houses should have priority over second houses please.