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Work starts on the eagerly awaited new Foxtons office on Brixton Road

leanderman said:
Absolutely.

But not going to happen - MPs own multiple homes and the economy is addicted to housing
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More importantly it destroys the lie that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector.

There are an estimated 15m empty bedrooms in owner occupied properties in England. In this sector, around half of all bedrooms are not slept in each night, compared with 10% amongst social renters and 16% for private renters. Even within inner London, there are more bedrooms than people; the number of unused properties in the heart of the capital is growing each year.
 
Dexter Deadwood said:
More importantly it destroys the lie that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector.

There are an estimated 15m empty bedrooms in owner occupied properties in England. In this sector, around half of all bedrooms are not slept in each night, compared with 10% amongst social renters and 16% for private renters. Even within inner London, there are more bedrooms than people; the number of unused properties in the heart of the capital is growing each year.
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A certain % of unused bedrooms is understandable... parents don't always want to move to a smaller house the moment their kids fly the nest; people have spare rooms for friends and relatives to stay; bedrooms that double as a home office etc etc. I just don't know what % of empty bedrooms I would expect in the UK.

How many bedrooms are there in the UK so that we have a comparison figure for the 15m?
 
A mansion in Helix Gardens off Brixton Hill is being taken apart in an endless restoration project for a Swiss banker, who has so much money he has bought a 'modest' five-bedroom house next door to live in in the meantime.

I guess the latter will be used as staff quarters when they move in to the mansion!
 
passivejoe said:
A certain % of unused bedrooms is understandable... parents don't always want to move to a smaller house the moment their kids fly the nest; people have spare rooms for friends and relatives to stay; bedrooms that double as a home office etc etc. I just don't know what % of empty bedrooms I would expect in the UK.

How many bedrooms are there in the UK so that we have a comparison figure for the 15m?
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A certain percentage of unused bedrooms is also understandable in social housing, a partner with a disability, less mobility (social, economic) to move amongst the poor is also a factor etc and the same reasons you quote above.
The total number does not matter the comparison does; 49% of bedrooms in owner occupied properties in England are empty versus 10% in social housing.

I'd also be interested in some statistics to show the state of overcrowding in social housing and how that compares to the private sector.
 
look what you can get for £200k in the wilds of Wales :)
8923385_orig.jpg

http://noddfachapelforsale.weebly.com/

and their offering £1000 to someone who helps them sell it!
not many pics mind :hmm:
 
Lovely but isolated. Jobs are hard to come by round there so you'd likely have to be someone who can work from home, or be retired.

And it rains. A lot :D
 
They must be having trouble shifting it if they want randoms on the internet to do their marketing for them. There is no way i would live in a church.
 
Dexter Deadwood said:
A certain percentage of unused bedrooms is also understandable in social housing, a partner with a disability, less mobility (social, economic) to move amongst the poor is also a factor etc and the same reasons you quote above.
The total number does not matter the comparison does; 49% of bedrooms in owner occupied properties in England are empty versus 10% in social housing.

I'd also be interested in some statistics to show the state of overcrowding in social housing and how that compares to the private sector.
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49%? Jesus, that's a lot. Surely there must be a lot of pensioners rattling around in empty family homes to skew those figures. It would actually be interesting to see how the 49% breaks down by demographic. Where are you getting the numbers from?
 
passivejoe said:
49%? Jesus, that's a lot. Surely there must be a lot of pensioners rattling around in empty family homes to skew those figures. It would actually be interesting to see how the 49% breaks down by demographic. Where are you getting the numbers from?
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The statistics come from the Guardian article and the pages the article links to.
 
leanderman said:
A mansion in Helix Gardens off Brixton Hill is being taken apart in an endless restoration project for a Swiss banker, who has so much money he has bought a 'modest' five-bedroom house next door to live in in the meantime.

I guess the latter will be used as staff quarters when they move in to the mansion!
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What mansions are these? The three storey terraces? They're about 180sqm unextended. Many of the two storey houses on the long terraces nearby are about 140-145sqm even before extending into the loft and a rear extension which can take them over 180sqm.

Does it become a mansion when a Swiss banker moves in?
 
Manter said:
The wording in there makes me think you won't get planning easily for change of use. Amazing chapel though. The house.... Not so much
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Fairly standard on those old Methodist chapels. That covenant would not stop conversion to a house. Unless perhaps you were intending to be a particularly immoral occupant! The cost of conversion would be a far greater obstacle to change of use.
 
Rushy said:
What mansions are these? The three storey terraces? They're about 180sqm unextended. Many of the two storey houses on the long terraces nearby are about 140-145sqm even before extending into the loft and a rear extension which can take them over 180sqm.

Does it become a mansion when a Swiss banker moves in?
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It's a mansion because it is an imposing double-fronter at end of short terrace on the Brixton Hill side. Number 4, I think.

You should take a look. The most calamitous building project I have seen.
 
leanderman said:
It's a mansion because it is an imposing double-fronter at end of short terrace on the Brixton Hill side. Number 4, I think.

You should take a look. The most calamitous building project I have seen.
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You're thinking of Num 2. It's a bit bigger again but is a funny shape as one side of the house is wrapped around a neighbours garden and consequently only one room deep.
They have been given permission to excavate a new basement under the front garden - as well as various other things.
 
Dexter Deadwood said:
Build a million council homes. Put people back to work. Increasing the tax base.
Permit local authorities to levy a property tax specifically for house building.
Have a windfall tax on all domestic and commercial capital gains of landlords over the last 10 years. Put the revenues into house building.
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Unfortunately, that'd be nigh-on impossible to carry out, even with the necessary legislation, as some of that money would have been lost on bad investments etc, which would give the interested parties something to piss and moan about for the next 100 years or so.

Abolish "Right To Buy" and "Help To Buy".
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Both would be necessary if the needed volume of social and private housing is to be achieved (HtB because it uses money that could fund building per se to delivber profits to developers).

Compulsory purchase of "Buy To Let" properties by the state at their original market value.
Abolish commercial landlordism.
Stop blaming foreigners for the shortcomings of the free market.
Stop seeing the housing crisis as an exclusively middle class issue. The media are particularly guilty of this.
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Because the media is fundamentally a middle and upper class institution.

Tinkering with interests rates (impossible anyway) and taxation are market mechanisms when it's the market that is at fault. It's like fiddling while Rome burns and Brixton overheats. The madness of neoliberalism permits mortgages to be cheaper than rents. It's a capitalist cruelty that creates overcrowding, forces people away from neighbourhoods they grew up in, provides little or no provision for the poor and ultimately leaves people homeless.
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TBF, even prior to neoliberalism, mortgage was often cheaper than rent. What neoliberalism has done is make it more or less socially-acceptable to exploit without opprobrium, and to brush off the consequences. People like us, who rail against the rentiers, we're a minority (although a growing one).

If you are homeless and on the streets the same system criminalises you. If you show some initiate and squat an empty building the same sick system criminalises you. The real criminals are those that keep a building empty and land undeveloped to turn a profit on investment.
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This has been the case for as long as we've had "private property". Nowadays, it's merely more baldly exploitative and "couldn't give a shit".

For as long as i can remember, housing has been the only market where rising prices were greeted with glee. Now that's beginning to change but only because the middle class are beginning to feel the pain the poor have always known. The poor shouldn't look to them for salvation nor their political persecutors who put them in privately run jails having put them out of their homes.
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Glee at rising prices has always struck me as inane. Why celebrate the fact that your property's value has increased, when the value of any property you might want to "trade up" to, will also have increased?
 
Dexter Deadwood said:
What is Tax Relief for Mortgage Interest on a Home Loan?
Tax relief for mortgage interest on a home loan is tax relief given to mortgage holders based on the interest paid on a qualifying mortgage on your home i.e. a new mortgage for a home, a top up loan used for the purposes of developing or improving your home, a separate home improvement loan, a re-mortgage or a consolidation of existing qualifying loans [i.e. loans used for the purchase, repair or improvement of your home], secured on the deeds of the home.
http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/leaflets/tax-relief-source-mortgage-interest-relief.html#section1
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Your link is Irish.
 
Dexter Deadwood said:
Why should the taxpayer pay for business costs?
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Because in some cases, those businesses will be socially-beneficial (providing local jobs and local services).
What I would say, is that there should be a clear differentiation between tax tweaks for property-based businesses (i.e. none!), and businesses that do provide a social benefit.
 
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