Housing Crisis? What About The 1.4 MILLION Empty Houses!

Government figures for ‘spare homes’ show the highest level in 20 years, with 1.4 million properties left empty for over six months.

Analysis of Government figures shows that there are more than one million additional homes above those required for households in the UK. This “housing surplus” has nearly doubled from 800,000 spare homes in 1996 to 1.4million homes at any one time in 2014. These “empty homes” are typically second homes, or vacant properties that are either left empty or are awaiting tenants or homeowners to move in.

The results show affluent areas, such as southwest London boroughs, have the most unoccupied houses. And, in a cruel twist of irony, the borough where Grenfell Tower burned – Kensington & Chelsea – has the highest number of empty homes!

Ian Mulheirn, an expert from Oxford Economics, told The Telegraph that the figures suggested that allowing developers to build more homes would not do much to bring down prices. He said prices are only likely to be lowered if and when mortgage rates began to rise.

Three factors drove house prices – the cost of mortgage debt, incomes of households and the supply of houses. Building more homes would lead to just increase the surplus of additional homes. He said: “The point is there are more dwellings than there are households.”

He said that relatively cheap access to credit combined with increased incomes for some middle class families had driven house prices upwards. Asked if this could be solved by building more homes, he said: “The answer is no. The question about are there enough houses, the evidence seem to suggest that there are. The evidence suggests that there are more surplus houses than there were 20 years ago.”

However, just last week figures were published showing that nearly a quarter of a million people are experiencing acute forms of homelessness across Britain, with rough sleeping set to rise by 76 per cent in the next decade unless the government takes long-term action to tackle the problem.

In what critics condemned as a ‘national scandal’ a total of 159,000 households are sleeping rough or living in unsuitable temporary accommodation and experiencing other forms of acute homelessness, marking a rise of nearly a third since 2011, according to Crisis.

Of these, 57,000 are ‘family’ households – consisting of 82,000 adults and 50,000 children – indicating that a growing number of families are being forced out of their housing and forced to live in unsuitable conditions.

Mark Scott, a specialist in residential property at law firm Blake Morgan, said: “Many homeowners might say that ‘a man’s home is his castle’ and the owner is free to leave their property vacant if they desire. However, there are a large number of empty properties in the UK and many would argue they could be put to better use.”