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1.5 million housing units != 1.5 million housing units for affordable rent London literally has tens of thousands of dwellings sitting empty. Many are investme

1.5 million housing units != 1.5 million housing units for affordable rent London literally has tens of thousands of dwellings sitting empty. Many are investment properties and will be sold multiple times without ever being lived in. It's easy to make money at the high end from rising property values without the hassle of dealing with tenants. It's easy to make money at the low end by packing as many tenants as possible into small properties and spending as little as possible on maintenance. There's occasionally some legal hassle with evictions, but generally for landlords it's a seller's market, with minimal regulation and enforcement.

kuang_eleven 5y ago
What isn't false in this comment is misleading. There is, indeed, tens of thousands of empty homes in London. In a city with millions of homes. Current statistics show a vacancy rate of 2.2% [1], which is an incredibly low rate, which implies a pathologically supply-constrained market. Additionally, there is no evidence to support that even a statistically relevant proportion of those empty homes are empty for investment purposes; vacancies can happen for a number of reasons, including being between tenants, non-primary homes, etc. 1. https://data.london.gov.uk/housing/housing-in-london/ https://data.london.gov.uk/housing/housing-in-london/