4 ms·

A good partial solution to London's housing problem is to tax the thousands of empty houses being used as investments. For example, there's a road in London ca

A good partial solution to London's housing problem is to tax the thousands of empty houses being used as investments. For example, there's a road in London called Bishops Avenue. The Saudi royal family owns about 1/3 of the houses on that road. ONE THIRD. Those houses are completely empty, they are just being used as investment by the Saudi elite (who can apparently amass as much money as they can because the US protects their kingdom against any democratic struggle). You can tax these houses (the Saudis have no objection paying property taxes in the US and they won't have an objection paying it in the UK) and use the tax money to build cheaper houses for people who need them. Get these Arabs, Indians, Russians who are hoarding London property to pay a tidy sum for being allowed in London. What you've got left is enough of London that Londoners can share. It is about time society realizes that the right to life and shelter is more important than property rights for foreigners.

gadders 12y ago
Yes, because if this woman in the article wasn't living on a barge she'd have spent £20m on a 10 bedroom mansion on Bishops Avenue.
- littletimmy 12y ago
  I am not saying start building projects on Bishops Avenue. I'm saying tax the people who hoard properties so that the money can be used to provide cheaper housing for people who need it.
  - kjs3 12y ago
    Then the next day there's be someone in the employ of the owner living in the house to avoid the tax, and that would undoubtedly not be someone who "needs it", for whatever measure of need.
- esja 12y ago
  There is an obvious ripple effect here which your comment ignores. Oligarchs buy in Knightsbridge, pushing aristocrats to Notting Hill. That pushes the international managerial types to places like Chiswick, which pushes the mere professionals to Ealing. And so on. If the oligarchs disappear, everyone moves in one slot, and this woman gets to live in a decent but modest home instead of a slum.
  - notahacker 12y ago
    Someone paying £280/month to live in a boat is playing in a different market from the professionals and families looking to buy though. People looking to rent by the room aren't necessarily worse off from the investment bubble if families are priced into the Home Counties and ordinary four-bedroom houses tend instead to be owned by absentee landlords anticipating far too much in the way of capital gains to be worried about maximizing rental yields (but not quite enough to consider leaving the properties empty) Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of ratcheting capital gains tax on properties owned by parties not tax-resident in the UK up to >90%, but the dynamics of how it'll all play out in the housing market aren't straightforward and euthanising the rentiers might actually make low-end rentals harder to come buy - social housing is really the only solution to that.
    - esja 12y ago
      There is no "different market" though. It's all one market for occupation of land, and one of the least regulated in the world... a place where speculators compete with residents, where locals compete with foreigners, Panama-registered limited companies compete with PAYE earners, and so on. That is a huge part of the problem.
      - notahacker 12y ago
        The property speculators don't compete to occupy land though. They purchase it from existing occupants - a group whose net movement is out of London altogether - and then compete to supply it to renters. The separation between the rental-by-the-room and the market to buy freeholds is well illustrated by the tendency of an influx of property speculators to increase supply in the former at the same time as they unambiguously decrease it in the latter.
- lmm 12y ago
  If the Conservatives hadn't changed the law a few years ago, she might well have squatted in one.
  - gadders 12y ago
    How is that a good thing? Squatting is stealing.
    - littletimmy 12y ago
      Stealing is objectively good when from criminals.
    - lmm 12y ago
      Not by most people's definition. And it had (and I think still has) wide popular support.
      - gadders 12y ago
        From people that actually own a home? Or just from people that want someone else's?
        lmm 12y ago
        Yes, from ordinary people who own one modestly-sized home and think that that's enough, that it's wrong for people to own unoccupied houses when other people can't get one.
- fab13n 12y ago
  > this woman in the article wasn't living on a barge she'd have spent £20m on a 10 bedroom mansion on Bishops Avenue. Of course you're kidding, and you realize that she'd probably share it with 4 friends and borrow only £2M, right?
kjs3 12y ago
I knew this would get around to being Americas fault.

gadders 12y ago

Yes, because if this woman in the article wasn't living on a barge she'd have spent £20m on a 10 bedroom mansion on Bishops Avenue.

littletimmy 12y ago
I am not saying start building projects on Bishops Avenue. I'm saying tax the people who hoard properties so that the money can be used to provide cheaper housing for people who need it.
- kjs3 12y ago
  Then the next day there's be someone in the employ of the owner living in the house to avoid the tax, and that would undoubtedly not be someone who "needs it", for whatever measure of need.
esja 12y ago
There is an obvious ripple effect here which your comment ignores. Oligarchs buy in Knightsbridge, pushing aristocrats to Notting Hill. That pushes the international managerial types to places like Chiswick, which pushes the mere professionals to Ealing. And so on. If the oligarchs disappear, everyone moves in one slot, and this woman gets to live in a decent but modest home instead of a slum.
- notahacker 12y ago
  Someone paying £280/month to live in a boat is playing in a different market from the professionals and families looking to buy though. People looking to rent by the room aren't necessarily worse off from the investment bubble if families are priced into the Home Counties and ordinary four-bedroom houses tend instead to be owned by absentee landlords anticipating far too much in the way of capital gains to be worried about maximizing rental yields (but not quite enough to consider leaving the properties empty) Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of ratcheting capital gains tax on properties owned by parties not tax-resident in the UK up to >90%, but the dynamics of how it'll all play out in the housing market aren't straightforward and euthanising the rentiers might actually make low-end rentals harder to come buy - social housing is really the only solution to that.
  - esja 12y ago
    There is no "different market" though. It's all one market for occupation of land, and one of the least regulated in the world... a place where speculators compete with residents, where locals compete with foreigners, Panama-registered limited companies compete with PAYE earners, and so on. That is a huge part of the problem.
    - notahacker 12y ago
      The property speculators don't compete to occupy land though. They purchase it from existing occupants - a group whose net movement is out of London altogether - and then compete to supply it to renters. The separation between the rental-by-the-room and the market to buy freeholds is well illustrated by the tendency of an influx of property speculators to increase supply in the former at the same time as they unambiguously decrease it in the latter.
lmm 12y ago
If the Conservatives hadn't changed the law a few years ago, she might well have squatted in one.
- gadders 12y ago
  How is that a good thing? Squatting is stealing.
  - littletimmy 12y ago
    Stealing is objectively good when from criminals.
  - lmm 12y ago
    Not by most people's definition. And it had (and I think still has) wide popular support.
    - gadders 12y ago
      From people that actually own a home? Or just from people that want someone else's?
      - lmm 12y ago
        Yes, from ordinary people who own one modestly-sized home and think that that's enough, that it's wrong for people to own unoccupied houses when other people can't get one.
fab13n 12y ago
> this woman in the article wasn't living on a barge she'd have spent £20m on a 10 bedroom mansion on Bishops Avenue. Of course you're kidding, and you realize that she'd probably share it with 4 friends and borrow only £2M, right?

kjs3 12y ago

I knew this would get around to being Americas fault.