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House price crash

I live in a four bed maisonette

A local training company just offered me 3600 quid a month for my spare rooms for three months ( 10,800 quid)

They have people who will happily share a room for 600 quid each per month. They said they would even sort out the single beds

Grown adults sharing two to a room

This is fucking unsustainable and insane.
So, what are you spending the ten grand on?
 
Local estate agent has sent round one of those 'let us sell your house' brochures which I have been idly flicking though and, good heavens, I knew prices had gone mad round here (pretty, coastal Cornwall) with the second home brigade piling in but I had no idea how bad things are. Prime locations with panoramic water views up an average of 80% on 2019. The ones with no water views - up 95% :eek:

Nothing at all for long term rent in large parts of Cornwall. Not even in the handful of bigger inland towns, which suffer from terrible deprivation and which soon won't have teachers in the schools or nurses in the hospitals (such hospitals as there are) because there's nowhere for them to live.

At some point the rich need to be told no. Not taxed, or disincentivised, but physically kicked the fuck out.
 
Nothing at all for long term rent in large parts of Cornwall. Not even in the handful of bigger inland towns, which suffer from terrible deprivation and which soon won't have teachers in the schools or nurses in the hospitals (such hospitals as there are) because there's nowhere for them to live.

At some point the rich need to be told no. Not taxed, or disincentivised, but physically kicked the fuck out.
Absolutely, it just has to stop. I had a second-homer telling me they used to have a house somewhere on the Gower but they sold up because - wait for it - the place was dead most of the time because there was no resident population. :facepalm:
 
It's fucking devastating in rural parts of Wales - all the most expensive places here are coastal villages, and additionally, it's badly affecting the Welsh language in its heartlands when locals can't afford to stay where they grew up (not an anti English rant, a/ I'm English, and b/ it's equally shit when the villages are bought up by weekenders from Cardiff). I can't say I'm sorry that received wisdom seems to be that these are the houses that will see the biggest drops - can't shed many tears for someone throwing millions at a cottage on the Llyn peninsula they barely use.
 
It has to be legislated against, it really does. It’s hard to imagine a government having the stomach for it though.
The Welsh government are having a nibble at it, with potential increases of up to 300% on second homes

 
The Welsh government are having a nibble at it, with potential increases of up to 300% on second homes

Yeah, this is good and it will definitely help on the margins. However:

a) If memory serves, it doesn’t apply to houses let out as holiday homes for more than something like 20-ish weeks a year. So that still gives people a big loophole that doesn’t help the local population

b) If you’re rich enough, you just eat the cost as the price of having a second home

c) a lot of councils, if memory serves again, are only charging twice the council tax and not the full four times

So not a bad start, but it needs to go a lot further.
 
Yeah, this is good and it will definitely help on the margins. However:

a) If memory serves, it doesn’t apply to houses let out as holiday homes for more than something like 20-ish weeks a year. So that still gives people a big loophole that doesn’t help the local population

b) If you’re rich enough, you just eat the cost as the price of having a second home

c) a lot of councils, if memory serves again, are only charging twice the council tax and not the full four times

So not a bad start, but it needs to go a lot further.
Like I say, it's a nibble. Welsh Labour don't like to push the boat out too much
 
Yeah, this is good and it will definitely help on the margins. However:

a) If memory serves, it doesn’t apply to houses let out as holiday homes for more than something like 20-ish weeks a year. So that still gives people a big loophole that doesn’t help the local population

b) If you’re rich enough, you just eat the cost as the price of having a second home

c) a lot of councils, if memory serves again, are only charging twice the council tax and not the full four times

So not a bad start, but it needs to go a lot further.
The number of weeks it is let out is quite onerous - I don't know exactly what the figure is, but it's definitely around the six month mark - at least for the place to be available for let. It's causing some consternation amongst some owners, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
 
The number of weeks it is let out is quite onerous - I don't know exactly what the figure is, but it's definitely around the six month mark - at least for the place to be available for let. It's causing some consternation amongst some owners, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
It's availability for 210 days and actually let for 105. The letting is at commercial rates, so freebies for the family or own use don't count. They can put someone in for up to 155 days in the winter.
It's not cheap to run a holiday let - laundry, trying to find cleaners, advertising and booking fees, rubbish collection, non-stop repairs and renovation, and for the sake of your sanity, a management agent. That bijou residence in a beautiful location can easily turn into a money pit if foreign holidays are cheap.
 
It's availability for 210 days and actually let for 105. The letting is at commercial rates, so freebies for the family or own use don't count. They can put someone in for up to 155 days in the winter.
It's not cheap to run a holiday let - laundry, trying to find cleaners, advertising and booking fees, rubbish collection, non-stop repairs and renovation, and for the sake of your sanity, a management agent. That bijou residence in a beautiful location can easily turn into a money pit if foreign holidays are cheap.
Oh, absolutely. There's a big difference down here between the dilettante holiday let owners - like the ones you describe - and those who are running them as a serious business operation. And it's the dilettantes who are doing most of the grumbling, not surprisingly.
 
i didnt expect this, that of all the homes in england the biggest chunk are owned outright with no mortgage at all.

How does that change things it probably means fewer people will feel the need to sell in a falling market than i would have imagined ?


Screenshot 2023-03-02 at 17.35.00.png

from here
 
Yeah, this is good and it will definitely help on the margins. However:

a) If memory serves, it doesn’t apply to houses let out as holiday homes for more than something like 20-ish weeks a year. So that still gives people a big loophole that doesn’t help the local population

b) If you’re rich enough, you just eat the cost as the price of having a second home

c) a lot of councils, if memory serves again, are only charging twice the council tax and not the full four times

So not a bad start, but it needs to go a lot further.

But you somehow don't have to pay business rates for a house that is let out the majority of the time, nor get planning permission for a change of use from residential to commercial.
 
It has to be legislated against, it really does. It’s hard to imagine a government having the stomach for it though.
I agree that it’s a terrible thing and I want it to be stopped. I’m not sure how legislation would be framed however.

It can’t just be stopped using pricing for the reasons stated. So you are left with stopping ‘outsiders’ which gets dodgy in terms of potential racism.

Perhaps one way to do it would be to have to demonstrate that it wasn’t your second home. But that could be got around by having the first in the husband’s name and the second in the wife’s.

I’d be interested to hear if there are any workable solutions that have been suggested.
 
i didnt expect this, that of all the homes in england the biggest chunk are owned outright with no mortgage at all.

How does that change things it probably means fewer people will feel the need to sell in a falling market than i would have imagined ?


View attachment 365202

from here
The fact that the group is growing is surely just a function of the fact there are more oldies finishing off paying for their mortgage than young people getting new ones. When old people die I suspect some houses are sold (and therefore become a new mortgage) but many are either sat on or rented out by inheritees.
 
I agree that it’s a terrible thing and I want it to be stopped. I’m not sure how legislation would be framed however.

It can’t just be stopped using pricing for the reasons stated. So you are left with stopping ‘outsiders’ which gets dodgy in terms of potential racism.

Perhaps one way to do it would be to have to demonstrate that it wasn’t your second home. But that could be got around by having the first in the husband’s name and the second in the wife’s.

I’d be interested to hear if there are any workable solutions that have been suggested.
I think you have to do it through the mechanism of “no second homes”. Yes, there are technical loopholes, but how many couples have just one of them owning their house they live in? There are implications to that, which for most people would not be worth it. And it would still be their second home in any case unless they designate it as their primary residence, which would mean that all their banking etc would have to reflect that, and HMRC are very hot on people artificially flipping their primary address to avoid capital gains tax.
 
From that article: "In some places in Wales, the Highlands, Cornwall and the Lake District, one in four properties are Airbnbs. When you add second homes to that statistic, there are villages like Elterwater in Cumbria where 80% of houses are unavailable to live in."
I think there needs to be tighter rules on Airbnb. It's turning homes into businesses and needs to regulated and taxed accordingly. Local authorities ought to have more say through planning system.
 
The other thing is foreign buyers. Tricky one but clearly the UK and London especially had courted foreign 'investors' which artificially inflates demand and prices in a way that isn't the case in many other countries.
 
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The other thing is foreign buyers. Tricky one but clearly the UK and London especially had courted foreign 'investors' which artificially inflates demand and prices in a way that isn't the case in many other countries.
You could designate protected villages and then require houses there only be sold to people who can demonstrate they are a permanent resident.
 
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