General Discussion
So as of the 1st April anyone with an empty property (even for a day) has to pay 50% council tax.
I believe the result of this for landlords will be
More council tax in the pot though less income tax as therefore less profit
Landlords may decide to sell their properties meaning, the market gets an over supply of housing thus bringing house values down which in turn currently would probably put anyone who has bought in the past 5 years in negative equity ( a downward spiral)
then there are less houses to rent because their up for sale, meaning fewer houses to rent, rents go up more benefits are needed in order to meet the new rents.
Am I wrong ? or are they just stupid ?
No you are not stupid, theres many people who can see where all these cuts are going but apparently not the Mps who voted for all this!!
This is TDC's policy on empty homes and Council Tax
"Changes to Council tax for empty and second homes
The Government is replacing the exemptions given to certain types of empty homes with a discount, the amount of which will be decided by local councils. Councils have also been given the power to reduce the current discount given to second homes and to charge a higher rate of council tax on homes that have been empty for 2 years or more. These new powers come into effect on 1 April 2013 and Teignbridge District Council has approved the following changes:
· To replace the Class C exemption which is currently given to an empty, unfurnished property for a maximum of 6 months with a discount of 100% which will be awarded for a maximum period of 1 month following which full council tax will become payable.
· To replace the Class A exemption which is currently given to an empty, unfurnished and uninhabitable property for a maximum of 12 months with a discount of 50% which will be awarded, subject to the property remaining empty and unfurnished for the same maximum 12 month period.
· To reduce the current 10% discount given to second homes to 0%.
· To charge council tax at the rate of 150% on long term empty properties
Some empty properties will continue to be exempt from council tax. These include properties left empty where the liable person has gone to live in a care home or where the liable person has passed away and probate has either yet to be granted or was granted less than 6 months previously. A full list of the discounts and exemptions that will apply from 1 April 2013 is available Discounts and Exemptions - April 2013
Some properties will be exempt from the 150% Empty Homes Premium and will continue to pay council tax at the rate of 100%. These include:
1) a property which would be the sole or main residence of a person but which is empty while that person resides in accommodation provided by the Ministry of Defence by reason of their employment i.e. service personnel posted away from home;
2) an annexe in a property which is being used as part of the main residence or dwelling in that property.
A copy of the report that was approved at the full council meeting on 15 January 2013 can be found here Full Report to Council and a copy of the supporting papers including Impact Assessment can be found here Consultation Report & Impact Assessment.
The regulations introducing these changes can be found here Regulations (April 2013"
or another scenario might be: if there are more houses/flats on the market for sale and as a consequence prices fall which consequently mean more people can afford to buy, then would it follow that a corresponding demand for rented property would also fall? Also, if more people buy then then the amount of property available for rent falls? If both of those things, then, as now, the market rent levels would be determined by the demand (for rented property) vs supply(of rented property). As this would vary around the country, as it does now, so rent levels would vary, as they do now.
I've questioned marked a lot of what I've written above as I am making suggestions as opposed to statements of fact. Just thinking out loud would be another way of putting it.
Would be interesting to know what thoughts others have on this.
And on a not totally unrelated subject - have a read of this.
We own rental property in another area that these new rules apply to, I wasn't aware that the rules were different alll around the country so thanks for pointing that out.
You would have thought that if property prices fell that people would buy, although I think that most people either can't afford to buy or "feel like" they can't afford to buy.
The trouble is a £140,000 house would cost approx 1200 a month on a mortgage though you could probably rent the same for approx 750-800 a month around here.
A couple earning say £20K and £16K would only be able to borrow £108,000
Hard to believe but a massive 66.5% of homes in England are owner occupied of which only 35% have an outstanding mortgage.
Home ownership has been in decline year on year for the past 20 years.
Social housing owns approx 3.4 million homes whilst the private rented sector owns 3.5 million,
it's just another way to tax us.
I would imagine that some small landlords may not be able to afford to repair their properties and pay council tax so who loses out, the tenant as they will be living in a worse property.
What annoys me is the heavy handedness.
May I give an example; tenant leaves with no notice, he leaves some belongings in the property and moves to a nearby property which he claims council tax benefit.
The landlord has not received his rent which he legally can't approach the tenant for 2 weeks, at that point he does notices the property looks empty (although not quite) at this point he could give the tenant 2 months notice or take him to court either way it will take 8 weeks, the landlord cannot legally relet the property until the end of the 2 months notice because the tenancy hasn't been terminated, if the landlord did let the property and the tenant returned the landlord would be liable for rehousing along with a court appearance for enforced eviction.
After all this the landlord then needs to enter the property tidy it up and re let it, in total an absolute minimum of 10 weeks for me thats at least £250 in council tax.
The trouble is I only rent to vunerable people, who generally don't have deposit funds so the council guarantee their rents, so no deposits to claim from.
I rent to such people as Ex drug addicts, alcoholics, violence avoidance, disabled, ex offenders, people with servere learning difficulties, single parents, oversized famalies, just to point out I only get the LHA allowance nothing extra.
Rant nearly over
I question your mortgage figure on a £140,000 property, with a 10% deposit the mortgage would be a lot less than £1200 a month.
some interesting letters about housing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2013/mar/03/housing-dont-build-more-use-existin
So it doesn't. Bizarre 'cos it was okay about an hour or so ago.
Still, I've managed to find the letters again so I've cut and pasted them. Here they are:
"Will Hutton ("Without affordable new homes, how do we build a better Britain?") asks the wrong question. The trouble with his implicit policy prescription – "build lots more new houses" – is that it can't be done, would not work even if it could be, and would cause huge collateral damage.
Any increase in building requires a commensurate increase in private and/or public debt – which is how we got into this mess. Where are the sustainable sources of funding? And why would builders build enough houses to depress the prices they get?
New housing is about 10% of the housing market, so to make much difference to prices or rents the numbers need to be truly enormous (the 2004 Barker review calculated that an extra 70,000 pa would price just 5,000 households into the market).
The main method proposed (not least by HBF, the Home Builders' Federation) is the release of masses of land in the places that they find it easiest to sell – greenfield sites in suburban and ex-urban locations. This triggers requirements for infrastructure, schools and healthcare. The resulting diversion of public and private resources would be hugely damaging to our cities (the Nimbys can look after themselves on countryside impact).
Rather than pursuing new build we should be looking at our existing stock of homes, which meets 90% of our needs, and focus on how to make better use of that. Many of these existing homes are rundown and unattractive because of the neglect of our cities and the imbalance between north and south. Addressing that requires us to look at the whole shape of our economy and society, not just housing.
Alan Wenban-Smith
Birmingham
Agreeing with Will Hutton about the need for affordable new homes, two words are missing from his proposals.
Productivity is the first. While blocks of flats and offices are constructed using factory-produced components, houses are still being built brick-upon-brick. This is labour intensive, and labour is a significant element in the total cost. It is slow, as well.
Prefab was a dirty word, associated with drabness, after the second world war, but colours and textures can break up the drabness. Perhaps a prize should be awarded to the best design for houses, incorporating productivity and aesthetics?
Law is the second missing word. In England, there are still caveats such as "subject to contract" or "subject to survey". Under Scottish law a verbal offer is binding, like a bid at auction. English law leads to chains and gazumping, both blocking the progress of a sale.
William Robert Haines
Shrewsbury
I am one of those people Will Hutton refers to as "a well-off 'striver' in a leafy suburb". Well, I think "striver" is a bit of an exaggeration but, after a 40-year career in reasonably well-paid jobs, coupled with a modest lifestyle, I have a decent pension fund as well as a ludicrously overvalued flat.
I moved to this "leafy" bit of London 30 years ago, to a two-bed flat that cost just under £50,000, three times my salary at the time. This flat is, apparently, now worth at least 15 times my highest-ever salary (just over £50,000, in 2007), placing it far beyond the budget of any 40-year-old equivalent of myself in a middle management role.
Anyone in my position will be sitting on a comparably large nest egg. The houses that we started buying 30 or more years ago have soared in value, giving them a net worth that bears no relation to the amount of "striving" we have done, nor even the mortgages we have paid. It is just the ridiculous result of decades of financial nonsense, coupled with a dire housing shortage which no one wants to tackle. This is the wealth we need to tap to help build a better future: we need a death tax now (sorry, son, you're on your own).
David Reed
London NW3"