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Second Homes
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
While some people have no home, or can not afford to buy their own home, is it justifiable for others to have two, or three...
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I fully agree with the measures some towns have taken of banning outsiders from buying second homes (if it is done for the right reasons though, rather than to keep 'strangers' out for the sake of it).
Do you not think that there might be a link between the two, no?
I can see your point of view, but to compare a Holiday to a Home is not a reasonable argument.
A second or third home is usually a vacation home, is it not?
Buy to Let.
You should have been more specific in your original question. Are you talking about second homes for personal use or something else? I read it as buying multiple homes for personal use; homes for vacations, homes closer to work that you can stay at if you have an early meeting or a different office cross country, homes closer to other members of your family.
Depends where youi live - parts of the North have houses which are so affordable you can virtually buy an entire terrace for the price of a pint (of course they're affordable because no-one wants to live their and the owners can't give them away).
I know but he's saying people shouldn't buy second homes if there's homeless people. Well there are empty houses and they'd be a hell of a lot more affordable than someone who's letting out a second home.
But surely its more eco friendly to refurbish than to knock down and rebuild? If they do a proper job of refurbishment (and they'll have to do something to sell them in areas of low demand) they'll put in plenty of energy saving insulation and double glazing, plus refit doors and windows etc.
ther are loads of places that are being bult now days on empty land though and leaving the shit places to rot.
That's what I thought.
Personally, I don't think people should be allowed to buy second homes unless their intention is to buy to let.
Because of the amount of people (usually rich, usually southern) that buy second homes and then leave them vacant for most of the time, the local communities are destroyed. The community loses its spirit because its filled with empty houses owned by people who couldn't give a toss if the post office closes down, becvause they have Range Rovers and staff to post letters. The people who have been born and raised in the community, and who often have lower wages than the average urban wage, are unable to afford to live where they were born, and they are forced to move huge distances, tearing families apart.
In the mean time, rather than getting a 50% council tax rebate on your holiday home, you should have to pay 1000% council tax, so you pay ten times what the council tax would be to an owner-occupier. If you can afford two homes you can afford to pay for the serious and irreparable damage you cause to the local community.
As for buy-to-let investors, they are less immoral, but they are still immoral. How I would solve this problem is by removing tax breaks if you offset rental income against the mortgage- you should have to pay income tax and NI contributions on all rental income, not just the profit you make after you pay the mortgage. You should also have to pay capital gains tax on all rental income, in addition to the income tax and NI. Stamp Duty should have a threshold of £0 on buy-to-let properties, and the rate of Stamp Duty should be quadrupled for all buy-to-let purchasers, so that the threshold can be raised for ownwer-occupiers. This should also be used to offset against the damage buy-to-let landlords cause to the local communities, particularly in student areas where having a transient and absent population and vacant houses causes serious crime problems.