Easy problems should have easy solutions - shouldn’t they?
Problems like Melton Mowbray’s housing crisis, where we have a rudimentary numerical
problem of too few homes for too many people ... the answer is clearly to build more property in Melton
Mowbray - but that, unfortunately for those desperately seeking to purchase or
let a property, takes a lot of time and huge amounts of money. So what of other
solutions?
The most recent set of figures from 2015 state there are 398 empty
homes in the Melton Borough Council area. So it begs the question ... why not
put them back onto the system and help ease the Melton Mowbray housing crisis? Whilst they stand empty, 654 Melton households
(not people – households) are on the Council House Waiting List for council
houses. Surely, we
can undoubtedly all agree that property left empty for years and years isn’t morally
right with the burgeoning Council House Waiting List, not to also mention the
issue of homelessness.
But a different story emerges when you look deeper into the
numbers. Of those 398 homes lying empty,
only 96 properties were empty for more than six months. The local authority has to report a property
being empty, even if it’s for a week. So
many of the Melton Mowbray properties are either awaiting new homeowners or, in
the case of rental properties, new tenants. Also some properties are being refurbished and
renovated, whilst other properties have homeowners who are anxious to sell but
cannot find a buyer.
This gets even more interesting. Of the 96 long-term vacant properties (those
empty more than six months), 28 belong to the council. However, before we all go Council-bashing, anecdotal
evidence suggests these empty council houses are habitually in need of so much restoration
that it’s not worth the Council’s while to do this. These properties are also on council estate areas
that the Council find difficult to fill.
The fact is that the number of genuinely long term empty properties
is only a tiny drop in the ocean of the 21,490 properties in the area covered
by Melton Borough Council and, even if every one of those empty homes were
filled with happy cheerful tenants tomorrow, it would only meet a small
fraction of Melton Mowbray’s housing needs.
So what does this mean for all the homeowners and landlords of Melton
Mowbray? Well it means with demand being
so high, especially for rental properties, the certainty of the rental market
growing is an inevitability because young people cannot buy and councils don’t
have the money to build new council houses. This in turn bolsters property prices as
landlords continue to buy at the lower end of the market (starter homes, etc),
which in turn sustains the rest of the market as those sellers move up the
property ladder, releasing others in turn to buy on again.
These are interesting times in the Melton Mowbray property
market!
No comments:
Post a Comment