Need to tax unoccupancy. If an entity is preventing people from living in the city, they should be paying more than those contributing to the well being of the city.
I would make it a 'complete, long term non-occupancy' tax, that is solvable by renting the places out or having someone live in them. People can still have whatever space they want, but don't do the utter waste of buying a house as a another form of bank account.
But as we all know getting bureaucracies to implement something like this will cost hundreds of millions, and will it be beneficial in the short term? Probably not. But we should start looking at long-term solutions.
> Michael Rosen writing in The Guardian has criticised how, under government proposals, parents living in social housing could become liable for what he calls the bedroom tax after only three months following the death of a child – something that inadvertently causes the creation of a "spare" room.[26] In March 2015 the Daily Mirror, a British tabloid newspaper, reported that a woman had become liable for the bedroom tax following her son's death from a brain haemorrhage following an assault.
> The changes in housing benefit have been criticised for having a disproportionate effect on disabled families. Two-thirds of individuals affected by the under-occupancy penalty are registered as disabled.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupancy_penalty
Penalizing people for having extra rooms while it is impossible for them to downsize because there is insufficient supply of smaller properties is not a long term solution.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/big-lie-behind...
The main problem is the lack of correct sized social housing. The bedroom tax forced people to downsize.
In southwark the most pressure of housing is for one and two bedroom properties. Most people were downsizing from 3+ into 2 or 1 bedroom places.
If the price is too high, its not because of tax (3-5%) its because there isn't enough to go round.
The lack of state rental housing means that there is increased pressure on private rental. There is no new supply of rental housing, which means that the existing stock becomes more valuable. This means that rental prices rise inline with the value of the housing stock.
This is turn means that the direct cost to the government rises as well.
Its literally cheaper to build council houses.
However this will never happen because: 1) it involves borrowing money for the "poor"
2) it involves planning for something longer than two years
3) it will lower house prices for the very voters that got the tories into government.
Nothing will change untill a crisis happens. And by crisis I mean the voting classes getting impacted.
An effective way might be forced auctioning off if the asset was left unoccupied for more than 9 months (to allow "holiday flats"). In case the asset sells for more than the price it was acquired, the previous owner gets only this price and any surplus ends up as taxes; in case the asset has less worth, the owner only gets the auction proceeds.
Resale value would plummet if properties were taxed more, especially if extra onerous taxes were put on foreign investors. This would discourage rich dirty-money investors using central London property as an offshore savings account.
>to allow "holiday flats"
I really don't see why Russians who spend two weeks in London a year need to occupy a huge apartment in South Ken. That space could be used for Londoners who are being pushed into zone 5.
Another idea that just jumped to my mind: why not tax any capital gains on property sales by 100%? Of course, deduct the inflation over the time the property was held by the owner, and in case the value of the property was increased by e.g. upgrading it, also deduct these costs and 5% margin for this investment... that would essentially disallow property investment.
Homes are made for living and profits should be made by living in the property or by renting it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Profiting from building a better home on the same plot of land shouldn't be eliminated, but profiting from building a house on a piece of land that suddenly becomes more valuable certainly should be.
If you're a Russian with enough cash to spare to buy a central London property just as an investment asset, the taxes have to be in triple-digit million ranges to become noteworthy.
> I really don't see why Russians who spend two weeks in London a year need to occupy a huge apartment in South Ken. That space could be used for Londoners who are being pushed into zone 5.
Expensive, multi-million-dollar apartments are not affordable by working-class people.
Higher taxes don't just mean higher taxes for the Russian, they also reduce the value of his property as an investment.
>Expensive, multi-million-dollar apartments are not affordable by working-class people.
Hence the use of the word "space", not "apartment".
In Spain, Andalucia (an area in the south of Spain), advocated during the political campaign to rent out thousands of flats owned by private banks, which in turn were bailed out with public money. Also Barcelona is going to implement measures to prevent the city to become an empty touristic resort with no much life beyond tourist apartments and hotels.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/rent-cap-legisl...