Homes From Empty Homes

>I had a troubling call from North Wales yesterday. The caller had just completed the restoration of a derelict cottage. It had been empty for seven years. As is his right, and as I have been advocating, he put in a claim to the local Customs and Excise office to reclaim his VAT under the VAT refund scheme.

The general and rather strange rule on VAT on restorations is that all building costs (materials and labour) are liable for VAT at 17.5%. New build properties however, are zero-rated.This gives a perverse incentive to build new houses when restoring existing ones may [...]

>In the 1960s a hugely successful science fiction book “The Day of The Triffids” got us all worried about the country being taken over by a plague of fast growing plants. If you are in the business of redeveloping empty property you may be forgiven for thinking that reality has caught up with fiction. Japanese knotweed has been in the UK for over a hundred yeas but it’s spread particularly around abandoned land and property has grown to problematic proportions in recent years

Japanese knotweed is a quite [...]

>Reducing council tax discounts on empty and second homes was always likely to have some odd consequences. A caller this morning told me how he has bought and put up thick curtains at the windows of his empty property so that the council couldn’t “snoop in and see whether the house was furnished” The reason for his apparent paranoia is that in many council areas there is a larger discount for unfurnished empty homes. He directed me to this rather interesting bulletin board which gives disgruntled empty [...]

> Saranda is a rather unlovely port and would-be holiday resort on the southern Albanian coast. No particular reason for talking about it now other than I happened to be there this time last week and it is one the most extraordinary examples of what happens when speculative building development goes out of control.

The Ionian Sea is arguably the most beautiful part of the Mediterranean and for most of the countries bordering it it has become a tourist money-spinner. Italy, Greece, and Croatia have dotted their coastlines [...]

> I regret to have to tell you that the concept of the ownerless property does not exist in the UK. There are a number of spam emails going around at the moment and at least two websites that tell you otherwise. Sign up, pay a fee, and they promise to tell you the secret of how you can claim ownerless empty properties up and down the country. Nice idea but I’m afraid it’s a scam. Since 1066 the UK has operated a system called Bona Vacantia. [...]

> With news that half of all key worker homes were lying empty Inside Housing is reporting that the government has responded and effectively axed the Key Worker Living Programme. Although it will live on in name, all new properties built under the scheme over the next two years will be available for anybody on council housing waiting lists to buy, not just people fitting the key worker criteria. Thus we are perhaps seeing the end of the rather sorry story we reported last month here. Key [...]

>According to recent Parliamentary questions asked by David Kidney MP, 186 local authorities (or 53%) have used their discretionary powers to abolish the council tax discount on empty homes.

In 2005/6 this abolition of the empty homes discount raised £72 million, rising from £49 million the year before.

Just think what this money could do if it was directed towards bringing more empty homes back into use to meet housing need.

>Has the Government has missed a trick? From April 1st 2004, local authorities have had the discretionary right to abolish the long-standing discount on council tax for empty property. For too long this discount had acted as a perverse incentive to keep property empty.

While they were allowed to keep the extra income raised from the abolition of the second homes discount, local authorities were not allowed to keep the income raised from the empty homes discount. Last year we highlighted that both the Mayor of London and Kent County Council were urging the Government to allow local authorities to keep [...]

> With self-build housing becoming increasingly popular a whole industry has grown up to provide information on plots of land for sale. Many of the plots are just that; a plot of open land. But these are becoming increasingly scarce and most plot-finding lists have a large smattering of plots with empty and redundant buildings built on them. Some of these are wrecks that are no good for anything other than demolishing. But you may be surprised how many rescuable empty homes you can find this way. [...]

> If you want to find an example of a rapidly growing and potentially overheating property market there is nowhere on the planet at the moment quite like China. The extraordinary economic growth that China has experienced is translating into a demand for more housing and rapidly escalating house prices (up 17.3% in Beijing in just two months earlier this year)

Construction companies are having a field day according to the People’s Daily “China is building more houses every year than the whole of the developed world”. But [...]

> “Unlocking the Potential of Empty Homes” has been short-listed in the New Statesman New Media Awards. In the Independent information category

The key themes of this year’s awards are “ingenuity, modernisation and accessibility”. They intend to award those who have achieved something of benefit to others, whether in their community or in society at large. Since 1998, these awards have promoted projects that embrace new technology, fresh thinking and creative management in the UK. “Society has always been promised a great deal by the digital revolution,” says [...]

>This is part two of a three or four part look at ways in which individuals and developers can track down empty homes that they may be interested in buying. The place that most empty homes come up for sale is at auction. Auctions are a quick and decisive way of disposing of property, which is why neglected properties that don’t have immediate saleability appeal are often sold through them. Loads of properties are sold through auctions every week.For a comprehensive list of property auction houses in [...]

>There was a debate on empty dwellings management orders in the House of Lords earlier this week. It was triggered by when two conservative peers, Baronesses Scott and Hanham, prayed against the new legislation.Baroness Hanham (Conservative) objected, but it turns out her objections were mainly based on misunderstandings over how the legislation will work. A sensible contribution from Baroness Maddock (Liberal Democrat) and a very full response from Baroness Andrews (government minister) put everybody at ease and the objection was withdrawn. Cross party consensus on EDMOs it seems has returned.

> It is with some shame that I admit to having missed the sad news of Jane Jacobs ’ death last week. She would have been 90 yesterday.

There is little I can add to the tributes and obituaries already written about this remarkable and influential woman other than to say her thinking is as relevant now as it ever was.

She was an American born activist who campaigned for community based urban planning. Her philosophy was to think of cities as living beings and ecosystems. She suggested that [...]

>A few months ago I was asked to write an article for the BBC’s website on tracking down empty homes. In one paragraph I mentioned that most local authorities had a list of empty properties that you could ask to see. I went on to say that under the Freedom of Information Act you have the right to request the list; all completely true. What I hadn’t anticipated was the effect this was going to have. Hundreds of people who read the article went straight out and [...]