What’s the Point of Taxing Landlords so Much When New Buyers Still Can’t Afford to Buy?
An article published this morning on BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45776289) stated “About 40% of young adults cannot afford to buy one of the cheapest homes in their area even with a 10% deposit”. This begs the question as to why the government seem so hell bent on discouraging second home ownership/being as it does not appear to be making any difference to the crux of the point: achieving home ownership for one and all.
All the while, the aforementioned landlord penalisation policy has simply served to raise rents throughout as landlords seek to preserve profit margins and the reduced supply of housing as landlords sell up property portfolio’s too. I have previously written about how the government should be incentivising landlords rather than taxing them and it is well worth re-exploring this notion. If new buyers cannot afford to purchase their own home, why should they have to pay sky high rents? The bottom line is: Opening up the property market to investment by landlords is an essential foundation to fixing the problem. Without a rental platform from which the Government can build a strategy for home ownership, they will always be playing catch up to high rents. Once a young person(s) is/are in rental accommodation, could the government offer more help?
Realistically, the country should have more than enough property to deal with this housing crisis and there should be enough property to allow younger people to access it. Imagine if the far reaches of the UK could be opened up with a high speed network but to areas such as Northern Ireland (Boris’ Bridge), Wales or the North East where property prices are so low! These sorts of things are not impossible and should be big public sector initiatives and would go a hell of a long way to solving the housing crisis for younger people. Imagine if you could get from the North East to Central London in an hour – this type of mobility of labour would be a major fix! Now all we have to wait for is Hyperloop! So leave landlords alone and realise their importance in SOLVING the housing crisis!
