Landlords concerned by empty properties

News Category: Legal

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A new survey indicates that many landlords and other homeowners are concerned about the number of empty homes in the UK.

The study by Halifax found that there were 288,763 empty properties in the UK in December last year, which is 1.7 per cent of the total housing stock.

As well as this, more than a fifth (22 per cent) of homeowners believe that empty properties close to their own house reduces its value, and 25 per cent thought that they could reduce the number of potential buyers.

Almost two-thirds of homeowners think that the government should do more to tackle the issue of empty homes, and Halifax is calling for a unified policy for council tax reduction for empty properties (at the moment various authorities offer different discounts).

"It's great to see that the public is behind our campaign to bring empty homes back into the housing stock," said Halifax's Jaedon Green.

"Halifax calls on the government to extend existing VAT and council tax discounts to encourage the renovation of empty houses, thus making them homes."

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