There are an estimated 920,000 empty home in the UK, according to the charity Homes from Empty Homes. Around 330,000 of these have been empty for more than six months. This figure does not include uninhabitable homes, or flats above shops (as these are exempt from council tax), so the real number of empty homes in the UK is likely to be well in excess of a million.
That all adds up to a lot of property sitting empty while a large amount of people sit on housing waiting lists, or struggle to squeeze into overcrowded homes. Perhaps you have a property that is lying empty when it could be let?
Bringing homes back into use
Local councils are increasingly targeting landlords and others who leave properties empty. The latest is North Devon Council, which has just announced a scheme to encourage landlords to lease their empty properties to the council. In return, they get a guaranteed rental income. Many other councils have empty homes schemes. Most notably, Kent County Council’s ‘No Use Empty’ scheme, which has been running since 2005 and offers good-value loans to property owners to help them refurbish their property to get it into a saleable or let-able condition.
If you have an empty home, it is well worth investigating what help might be available to you to bring it back into use. Many homes lie empty because their owners cannot afford to refurbish them, or because they are in less desirable (and so difficult to let in) areas. While getting tenants into an empty home may cost money, there are considerable costs attached to keeping a home empty too. Most empty homes must still have council tax paid on them and are also vulnerable to vandalism and squatting, both of which could cost thousands to put right. Regular maintenance jobs tend not to be done when homes are empty, meaning problems can mount and end up being much more expensive to put right than they should have been.
It makes sense for empty homes to be used, both for their owners, and for society in general. No-one wants to live next-door to an empty home, and no-one wants to be stuck in temporary accommodation whilst homes are empty. There are, of course, costs involved in getting people into your empty home from repairs to landlords insurance, but with a little help and a willingness to invest, these can easily be offset against rental income.