Over 200 000 vacant homes across England

Over 200 000 vacant homes across England

A housing and residential property research conducted in England has indicated that nearly two hundred and five thousand homes are currently sitting empty in various regions of the country. It is estimated that the total value of all these properties is more than thirty eight billion pounds, which is quite a substantial figure indeed.

Amazingly, London has the highest number of long term empty domestic properties. Given the housing shortage the city has been experiencing, the twenty one thousand vacant homes in London add up to twelve and a half billion pounds in value. The highest number of empty houses outside London is in Bradford – four thousand properties, worth about four hundred million pounds. On a local level, Lewisham – one of the most financially challenged boroughs of the capital, is in fact the place with the highest number of disused houses in all of London – more than twelve hundred properties.

In Manchester however, the trend is opposite – over the last ten years, disused housing in the city has dropped by whopping eighty four percent. In figures that is about ten thousand empty dwellings in 2005, with only about fifteen hundred empty ones in 2015.

For England as a whole, in the last ten years empty housing has been on the decrease. In two thousand five there were just under three hundred and fifteen thousand disused houses in the country, whereas in two thousand fifteen there were about two hundred thousand. Yorkshire (including Bradford) is the region with the highest number of empty residential properties outside the capital – a total of twelve thousand properties, with an estimated market value of one and a half billion pounds.

Newham, being one of the more deprived London boroughs, has the highest number of empty houses in the entire capital – one thousand three hundred, totalling four hundred and seventy million pounds in value. On the other end of the scale in Kensington and Chelsea (a highly expensive part of town) there are one point seven billion pounds in disused housing. The smallest borough of the capital – City of London respectively has the lowest number of vacant homes – just forty four in total.

In the last ten years, only three of all London boroughs have seen an increase in disused housing, they are Kensington and Chelsea, Haringey and Lewisham. As a whole these figures show missed investment opportunities, it also means lots of unrealised business potential for London removal companies. The changes to council legislation from two thousand five, where local councils are legally allowed to take ownership of disused homes (if empty for more than 2 years) and rent them out to new tenants, have actually increased the number of empty homes rather than decrease it.

If mere half of all the vacant homes in Greater London are put back on the market, it would go a long way in dealing with the city’s housing crisis. Newly elected London Mayor has received extensive advice and recommendations on dealing with the problem, time will tell whether advice has been taken.