Making housing affordable

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IvanV
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Making housing affordable

Post by IvanV » Mon May 23, 2022 10:36 pm

It came up from time to time in other recent threads, so I thought I would create a new one, setting out an overview of the main issues. It is complicated and far from easy, so this will be a very long post.

Making housing affordable is a difficult problem many countries. I’m not aware of anywhere we can point to and say, “Look, they have solved this. Let’s look what they do.” It’s a pervasive problem in NW Europe. In Europe, Sweden has suffered some of the largest recent house price increases. That, and similar problems in Australia, New Zealand, and California, reminds us that it is not just a problem of places with high population density. Meanwhile, in China, they have tried to build new cities, and several are notoriously badly under-occupied, perhaps warning that house-building might not be a panacea.

Building houses in places where people don’t want to live is no solution, as China demonstrates. Various papers have been published suggesting that even building them in places where people do want to live might have a disappointingly limited effect on house prices.
Meanwhile, people variously suggest things like banning buy-to-let, higher taxes on property rental income, higher local and stamp duty taxes on second homes (even though stamp duty stupid tax that helps screw up the market, and is it even clear what a second home is?), making it difficult for AirBnB to operate, designating houses for “locals” only (whoever they are), etc. I tend to be suspicious of such “solutions”, as further interference in markets is rarely a successful method of improving the workings of a market that isn’t working very well.

A major factor in the current widespread high price of houses is clearly low interest rates. Low interest rates tend to increase the capital value of all kinds of economic assets, and houses are not an exception. Currently inflation-corrected or “real” interest rates are rather negative, as inflation is rather higher than the Base Rate. In Britain, lockdown and the expansion of telecommuting has presented an increased demand for larger houses. So an increased demand for more floor area is like a tightening of supply in a market of near fixed total floor area. There has also been a general tendency for the average house in the market to get smaller, both through new-build and through property division, in part in response to smaller household size.

Let us first set out the supply and demand for houses, as I think the fundamentals sometimes are overlooked.

The supply of houses into the market comprises mainly:
• Sales of privately owned housing – where frequently the sellers are funding the purchase of a replacement dwelling
• Newly built/converted housing
• Privately rented housing
• Socially rented housing
The demand for houses includes mainly:
• Long-term occupancy
• Short-term occupancy, such as holiday lets and other temporary accommodation
• Second houses: people with multi-location lifestyles, using all regularly
• Second houses: holiday homes that are not (much) let out to other holiday-makers
• Second houses: for money laundering, often barely occupied
These are not exhaustive lists, but I think that is most of it.

Long-term occupancy can be supplied equally by owner occupation or private rental – it’s the same building with the same floor-space and available for long-term occupancy. So let us not get too hung up on buy-to-let, alias private landlordism. Yes, suppressing private landlordism will reduce house prices. But that doesn’t make houses for long-term occupation more available, measured as total floor-space. Without the capital put up by private landlords, less will be built. Suppressing them is in part a rent-seeking argument by certain subsections of the population. I’ve argued this several times before, and many people won’t accept it, so probably you still won’t. Even if you disagree with my claim if anything it reduces the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation, perhaps you might at least accept it is unlikely to produce a large increase in the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation.

Long term occupancy is a substitute for short term occupancy. Short term holiday lets are now easier to arrange. To some degree, this reduces the demand for hotels, guesthouses and other forms of tourist accommodation, so some buildings/land those occupy can be repurposed. But it seems that the likely overall effect is to reduce the cost and inconvenience of tourism, and so increase the demand for it. And so some housing is withdrawn from the long-term occupancy market. This is a difficult question. If there is a demand for tourism and it requires accommodation, then where are we going to put that as well as the houses the permanent population will live in? Do they really want to reduce their local tourism market? It is especially difficult in crowded little settlements in beauty spots, where it is hard to expand to build suburbs for the permanent population, of the kind that tourists don’t want to rent. Whilst this is a serious and vexed problem, it mostly affects certain tourist areas.

Long term occupancy property is a substitute for second houses that get low occupancy, eg a holiday home visited for 2 or 3 weeks a year, and not let out to others in between. This is the style of ownership that probably most tightens supply in local markets, provides little local economic benefit, and most angers the locals. What are we to do? Arguably it is good to make it easy for people to let out their holiday houses, so they are less tempted to buy them and then fail to let them out to others. But there will always be people with money to burn, or launder. The trouble is that there is a continuum with no easy divide between a reasonable multi-property life-style, (eg an MP requiring London and constituency homes), and having a badly under-occupied holiday home you fail to let out. And it is hard to assess the level of occupancy of properties, and so difficult to tax people on low occupancy. Really the best thing is to try to encourage them to get people in, whether long or short term.

But again, I think this is mainly a local issue in certain areas. And whilst a big problem in some areas, overall only about 3% of households in Britain report having a second home in recent surveys. I suspect that we can live with that at an aggregate scale. If they all sold their second houses, that wouldn’t be very much additional supply, only a couple of years’ worth. And it seems unlikely to be much of a factor in making houses over-priced in, say, Croydon, and most other non-tourist towns. In more spacious countries in Europe, second houses are much more common. So a lot of anger, a serious problem in a few areas, but overall not going to have much effect on the wider market.

So we end up back at trying to increase the supply of new houses. Do we believe the claims of some studies that it would be of very disappointing effect? In some recent thread, someone suggested that the houses in the market available to buy comprised 10% new-supply and 90% existing supply. So what would even doubling new housing supply do to that? I think that overlooks the fact that many of the 90% are being sold by people who want to move on into another one. So actually not very much of that 90% is net supply to expand the market. So if the rate of house-building doubled, and so increasing the supply of new houses in the market from 10% to 20%, assuming the same market volume of used houses, that would actually be a very serious increase in supply to satisfy new buyers. An increase in supply of social housing or rental property also increases the amount of floor space available to live in.

Certainly an increase in the supply of new houses will increase the supply of houses to be converted into holiday lets and houses to own and hardly use. The rate of ownership of second houses has increased rapidly in recent years, by about 50% over 10 years or so. In part this is due to the difficulty of getting a decent return from financial investments, so people buy second houses instead. Though in many cases they let them out, either for long-term occupation or holiday lets, so they aren’t actually withdrawing the floor space from the market, although some of it might move to the holiday let market. Suggestions from some authors that you’d need some enormous increase in supply to have much effect on price seem to be to be overblown. Who is going to own all this underused property? At the moment only 3% of us seem to own some underused property? Is that really going to increase hugely once the price of houses starts to come down? Maybe it is: it is hard to know for sure. But I find it somewhat unlikely. Especially if the additional housing supply is largely in working and commuter towns, rather than tourist locations, that mainly attracts people’s under-occupied second homes.

Meanwhile, the Usual Tory backbench Suspects, doubtless much supported by the Daily Mail, have apparently succeeded in materially neutering the government’s plans to try and turn on the taps of housing supply. As they always do. So don’t expect anything much to happen.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Millennie Al » Tue May 24, 2022 1:12 am

Affordable or available? If it's affordable you want, then we should analyse where the cost of housing comes from. There are three broad categories of cost: the land, the act of building, and other. If you take a house that costs £500,000 and split out the costs, you may find a breakdown like this: land is £50,000, building is £350,000, and other is £100,000. You can find out the cost of building by checking an insurance policy which gives an estimate for complete re-building in the event of a disaster that destroys the house. You can find the price of land by looking at land prices nearby. The remaining costs is the cost of things like planning permission. This is, in effect, a cost imposed by those who own or live in nearby property and who want to maintain the value of what they have. So they object to spoiling of their view, and extra congestion on the roads, and loss of a field where they walk their dog, and lots of other things.

There has also been a gradual imposition of expenses which are part of the building cost. Some of these are very good value, such as using double glazing instead of the old style cheap windows. And in future these will increase. A famous example is the requirement to use a heat pump instead of a gas boiler for central heating. Each of these needs to be carefully evaluated to see if it passes the test of being so necessary that it should be required even if it prices people out of buying.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by discovolante » Tue May 24, 2022 8:18 am

Long-term occupancy can be supplied equally by owner occupation or private rental – it’s the same building with the same floor-space and available for long-term occupancy. So let us not get too hung up on buy-to-let, alias private landlordism. Yes, suppressing private landlordism will reduce house prices. But that doesn’t make houses for long-term occupation more available, measured as total floor-space. Without the capital put up by private landlords, less will be built. Suppressing them is in part a rent-seeking argument by certain subsections of the population. I’ve argued this several times before, and many people won’t accept it, so probably you still won’t. Even if you disagree with my claim if anything it reduces the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation, perhaps you might at least accept it is unlikely to produce a large increase in the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation.
You don't mention social housing here at all, why not? (Although you briefly mention it below).

Really the most obvious logical conclusion to what you have laid out seems to be to invest in building more social housing, with perhaps some form of compulsory purchase of some kinds of low use/improperly used property in high density areas (not suggesting that's politically desirable)
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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by IvanV » Tue May 24, 2022 1:00 pm

discovolante wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 8:18 am
Long-term occupancy can be supplied equally by owner occupation or private rental – it’s the same building with the same floor-space and available for long-term occupancy. So let us not get too hung up on buy-to-let, alias private landlordism. Yes, suppressing private landlordism will reduce house prices. But that doesn’t make houses for long-term occupation more available, measured as total floor-space. Without the capital put up by private landlords, less will be built. Suppressing them is in part a rent-seeking argument by certain subsections of the population. I’ve argued this several times before, and many people won’t accept it, so probably you still won’t. Even if you disagree with my claim if anything it reduces the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation, perhaps you might at least accept it is unlikely to produce a large increase in the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation.
You don't mention social housing here at all, why not? (Although you briefly mention it below).

Really the most obvious logical conclusion to what you have laid out seems to be to invest in building more social housing, with perhaps some form of compulsory purchase of some kinds of low use/improperly used property in high density areas (not suggesting that's politically desirable)
Sorry, I quite agree and forgot to rehearse that point.

Clearly an effective method of extending the availability of affordable housing is to build a lot more social housing. That ought to be an entirely obvious and easy point. Enough of it might even compete down the price of private sector rents and houses for sale.

Of course social housing is not always entirely satisfactory. Some social landlords seem to be inefficient, negligent and/or corrupt. Social housing is often identifiable by its plain or even ugly design and basic construction materials. The builders who will deign to build social housing tend to be rather rough and ready in their construction methods, as a friend of mine who is a manager in a large housing association is very well aware - he can't get better quality builders to tender.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by IvanV » Tue May 24, 2022 1:19 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 1:12 am
You can find the price of land by looking at land prices nearby.
Ah, the price of land. Land prices near me are much lower than the sums you mention, because it has designated agricultural or equestrian purpose. It becomes worth about 50 or 100 times that when you are allowed to build a house on it.

The demand for building land is what we economists call a "derived demand". In other words, the actual demand is for housing, and the demand for housing land is derived from that. What can you sell the house for? What did it cost to build? Subtract the two and that is value of the land. You can't buy some land at a standard market value, like you can bricks, and move it to where you want it. It doesn't contribute to the cost of building a house in the way that the other inputs do.

So it really is of very little interest to enquire into the cost of "building land". All that matters is that the cost of building the house is a lot less than it can be sold for. When building land costs 100 times the value of land in an alternative purpose, we can realise that the supply of building land is very substantially constrained by planning restrictions.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by TopBadger » Tue May 24, 2022 4:15 pm

Surely the bank's propensity to lend larger amounts and government schemes to fill the gap have to be a factor too.

House prices couldn't grow so high without banks being willing to lend larger multiples of income and government schemes like help to buy. Every chain needs a buyer at the bottom.

Edit to add... what about gazumping too... a seller can accept an offer to then discard it if a higher offer is made. This can only add upward pressure on prices.
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Martin Y
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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Martin Y » Tue May 24, 2022 5:40 pm

While demand outstrips supply the price is constrained by however much buyers can borrow. It's not really banks desire to lend ever more money that pushes prices up, rather it's their resistance to lending unsustainable amounts that stops prices being even more absurd.

Why yes I did just watch The Big Short again, and I don't want to paint them as the heroes, but while they keep coming up with schemes to lend ever greater sums (like insidiously suggesting the bank of mum and dad is normal now) these are at least schemes where they expect their borrowers will be able to keep paying.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Woodchopper » Tue May 24, 2022 5:43 pm

The biggest factor in the amount people can borrow is the interest rate. The base rate was at a high of 17% in the late 1970s. Rates have been declining steadily since the early 1990s and the base rate is1% now and has been lower. See here for a graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... e_1800.png

The western world is living through an era of extraordinarily cheap credit. So it’s no wonder that house prices have increased so much at the same time that interest payments have dramatically decreased.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Sciolus » Tue May 24, 2022 6:28 pm

Discretionary income is a much higher fraction of total income than it used to be, at least for people on middle incomes, because the relative price of food, clothes, transport, energy and the like is much lower than a few decades ago. Incomes have risen faster than inflation for ages. So there's a lot of people with a lot of money looking for something to spend it on. Holidays, w.nky cars and large houses are obvious candidates. And from the banks' point of view, the old 3x income rule can be replaced by 4x or 5x and still be affordable.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Woodchopper » Tue May 24, 2022 7:19 pm

Sciolus wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 6:28 pm
Discretionary income is a much higher fraction of total income than it used to be, at least for people on middle incomes, because the relative price of food, clothes, transport, energy and the like is much lower than a few decades ago. Incomes have risen faster than inflation for ages. So there's a lot of people with a lot of money looking for something to spend it on. Holidays, w.nky cars and large houses are obvious candidates. And from the banks' point of view, the old 3x income rule can be replaced by 4x or 5x and still be affordable.
Yes, definitely. Five times income makes sense when interest rates are at 1% rather than 15%.

I'll also add to your list that as far as housing is concerned, the household income is most important. That increased as it became much more common for woman to work and so dual income households became normal.

The problem with housing is, as IvanV points out, that is a very fixed asset and its in short supply. So a combination of increasing household incomes and very cheap credit leads to sky high prices as every household tries to out bid each other.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Jul 28, 2022 2:25 pm

Developers in west London face a potential ban on new housing projects until 2035 because the electricity grid has run out of capacity to support new homes, jeopardising housebuilding targets in the capital.

The Greater London Authority wrote to developers this week warning them that it might take more than a decade to bulk up grid capacity and get developments under way again in three west London boroughs — Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow.

In those boroughs, “major new applicants to the distribution network . . . including housing developments, commercial premises and industrial activities will have to wait several years to receive new electricity connections”, according to the GLA’s note, which has been seen by the Financial Times.
https://www.ft.com/content/519f701f-6a0 ... cf10c7c2c0

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Brightonian » Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:15 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 2:25 pm
Developers in west London face a potential ban on new housing projects until 2035 because the electricity grid has run out of capacity to support new homes, jeopardising housebuilding targets in the capital.

The Greater London Authority wrote to developers this week warning them that it might take more than a decade to bulk up grid capacity and get developments under way again in three west London boroughs — Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow.

In those boroughs, “major new applicants to the distribution network . . . including housing developments, commercial premises and industrial activities will have to wait several years to receive new electricity connections”, according to the GLA’s note, which has been seen by the Financial Times.
https://www.ft.com/content/519f701f-6a0 ... cf10c7c2c0
Data centres are being explicitly blamed in articles such as this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/28/2328 ... evelopment

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Martin Y » Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:59 pm

Data centres? That's interesting. Not electric car charging, which would have been my first guess. (Not as a show-stopper right now, but as a problem within the number of years new developments take to get from planning to consent to built.)

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by dyqik » Thu Jul 28, 2022 5:04 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:59 pm
Data centres? That's interesting. Not electric car charging, which would have been my first guess. (Not as a show-stopper right now, but as a problem within the number of years new developments take to get from planning to consent to built.)
Cynically, I wonder how much electricity capacity would be freed up if you banned BitCoin etc.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by basementer » Thu Jul 28, 2022 5:24 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:59 pm
Data centres? That's interesting. Not electric car charging, which would have been my first guess. (Not as a show-stopper right now, but as a problem within the number of years new developments take to get from planning to consent to built.)
In this company announcement to the NZ share market, data centres are described explicitly in MW:
https://www.nzx.com/announcements/385553
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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by discovolante » Tue Aug 02, 2022 3:58 pm

IvanV wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 1:00 pm
discovolante wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 8:18 am
Long-term occupancy can be supplied equally by owner occupation or private rental – it’s the same building with the same floor-space and available for long-term occupancy. So let us not get too hung up on buy-to-let, alias private landlordism. Yes, suppressing private landlordism will reduce house prices. But that doesn’t make houses for long-term occupation more available, measured as total floor-space. Without the capital put up by private landlords, less will be built. Suppressing them is in part a rent-seeking argument by certain subsections of the population. I’ve argued this several times before, and many people won’t accept it, so probably you still won’t. Even if you disagree with my claim if anything it reduces the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation, perhaps you might at least accept it is unlikely to produce a large increase in the quantity of floor area available for long-term occupation.
You don't mention social housing here at all, why not? (Although you briefly mention it below).

Really the most obvious logical conclusion to what you have laid out seems to be to invest in building more social housing, with perhaps some form of compulsory purchase of some kinds of low use/improperly used property in high density areas (not suggesting that's politically desirable)
Sorry, I quite agree and forgot to rehearse that point.

Clearly an effective method of extending the availability of affordable housing is to build a lot more social housing. That ought to be an entirely obvious and easy point. Enough of it might even compete down the price of private sector rents and houses for sale.

Of course social housing is not always entirely satisfactory. Some social landlords seem to be inefficient, negligent and/or corrupt. Social housing is often identifiable by its plain or even ugly design and basic construction materials. The builders who will deign to build social housing tend to be rather rough and ready in their construction methods, as a friend of mine who is a manager in a large housing association is very well aware - he can't get better quality builders to tender.
I never responded to this sorry.

Definitely a massive problem and also one that is not taken seriously. My day to day anecdotal experience of working with tenants of social landlords is that when they're treated badly their concerns are often dismissed, there is a real imbalance of power there and social landlords make much of how they are providing housing to vulnerable people etc. Maybe I am a bit biased but there are also several examples of HAs being found seriously lacking in cases of bad disrepair, neglect etc, once and if it actually gets to a regulator. Even post-Grenfell.

However it's not as if new build properties to purchase are all built to a high standard either, quite the opposite in a lot of cases really. These are deep rooted problems but they aren't a reason not to build social housing in the first place.
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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by noggins » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:18 pm

London has 87,731 empty properties and 250,000 people on council house waiting lists.

Queation is: how to force the a good chunk of the empties onto the rental market without being a brutal fascist?

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by dyqik » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:31 pm

noggins wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:18 pm
London has 87,731 empty properties and 250,000 people on council house waiting lists.

Queation is: how to force the a good chunk of the empties onto the rental market without being a brutal fascist?
Another question is how many of those properties are currently habitable/up to social housing standards. Not all will be ready for immediate occupation.

London has ~3.6 million residential properties, so 88k is 2.5%. So I doubt it's all of them at all, but it could be 1% or so that aren't up to standard.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by discovolante » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:42 pm

dyqik wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:31 pm
noggins wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:18 pm
London has 87,731 empty properties and 250,000 people on council house waiting lists.

Queation is: how to force the a good chunk of the empties onto the rental market without being a brutal fascist?
Another question is how many of those properties are currently habitable/up to social housing standards. Not all will be ready for immediate occupation.

London has ~3.6 million residential properties, so 88k is 2.5%. So I doubt it's all of them at all, but it could be 1% or so that aren't up to standard.
Plenty of occupied social housing in London is below social housing standards tbh.
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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by bolo » Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:18 pm

Are there any more details on what qualifies as an "empty property"? If a flat is occupied for a year, and then the tenant leaves, and the place is empty for a week before the next tenant moves in, that comes pretty close to 2.5% vacancy. Or occupied 7 years, then sold and empty for 2 months before the buyer moves in.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by IvanV » Wed Aug 03, 2022 8:50 am

discovolante wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 3:58 pm
...My day to day anecdotal experience of working with tenants of social landlords is that when they're treated badly their concerns are often dismissed, there is a real imbalance of power there and social landlords make much of how they are providing housing to vulnerable people etc. Maybe I am a bit biased but there are also several examples of HAs being found seriously lacking in cases of bad disrepair, neglect etc, once and if it actually gets to a regulator. Even post-Grenfell.

However it's not as if new build properties to purchase are all built to a high standard either, quite the opposite in a lot of cases really. These are deep rooted problems but they aren't a reason not to build social housing in the first place.
Yes I agree it is not a reason not to build social housing in the first place, that some social landlords are poor and some of the housing stock they own/build is poor. And, as you say, we should not forget that a lot of private housing stock is poor, not just because some house-builders are evil charlatans who repeatedly get away with it, but also because many house-owners are just not sufficiently well-off to keep their house maintained or adjusted to a good standard.

I mention them because they are issues we need to take into account in our overall balance of our housing policy and strategy.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Grumble » Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:44 am

Would it help affordability if we were to discourage multiple home ownership?

Two things I can think of, and I’m sure there are ways round these:

A home that’s not designated as a primary residence attracts double council tax.

Private tenants get right to buy (needs to have protections against being evicted before the right is activated).
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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:19 am

Grumble wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:44 am
Would it help affordability if we were to discourage multiple home ownership?

Two things I can think of, and I’m sure there are ways round these:

A home that’s not designated as a primary residence attracts double council tax.

Private tenants get right to buy (needs to have protections against being evicted before the right is activated).
Multiple home ownership is definitely a problem if the second home remains empty (eg holiday homes that are only occupied a few months in the year).

The easiest way to fix that problem is to ban it. Just pass a law that in certain places home ownership needs to coincide with primary residence.

Buy to let is a bit more complicated in terms of overall supply.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by WFJ » Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:04 am

Grumble wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:44 am
Would it help affordability if we were to discourage multiple home ownership?

Two things I can think of, and I’m sure there are ways round these:

A home that’s not designated as a primary residence attracts double council tax.

Private tenants get right to buy (needs to have protections against being evicted before the right is activated).
You can't make housing more affordable by screwing with rental markets. You'll just make things worse for the less well off. Right to buy is a terrible idea whether applied to privately or publicly owned housing.

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Re: Making housing affordable

Post by science_fox » Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:36 pm

WFJ wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:04 am
Grumble wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:44 am
Would it help affordability if we were to discourage multiple home ownership?

Two things I can think of, and I’m sure there are ways round these:

A home that’s not designated as a primary residence attracts double council tax.

Private tenants get right to buy (needs to have protections against being evicted before the right is activated).
You can't make housing more affordable by screwing with rental markets. You'll just make things worse for the less well off. Right to buy is a terrible idea whether applied to privately or publicly owned housing.
I don't know about a terrible idea... but certainly anything that is bought needs to be replaced with a more social low-cost housing. And the council housing authorities that owned the original stock won't have the funding to do so .
I'm not afraid of catching Covid, I'm afraid of catching idiot.

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