Zoe Williams is quite right to identify foreign ownership for investment purposes to be one of the root causes of the housing problem, particularly in London and the south-east (Why more houses won’t solve the housing crisis, 22 June). However, a sudden move to an outright ban on such ownership would be too drastic a step to adopt in one go, as it would bring about a step change in the price of properties, and leave those already struggling to make mortgage repayments in the invidious position of negative equity.
Also, by focusing solely on the shortage of individual properties, Ms Williams ignores the fact that the key aspect of the problem is the shortage of bedroom capacity both in the rental and owner occupied sector.
A far better plan, therefore, would be to extend the concept of the “bedroom tax” to the private sector and link it to the council tax band for the property. This would encourage as many as possible to downsize and/or sell second homes, especially if each bedroom in any property lacking a long-term UK resident were taxed separately.
Thereafter, it would be possible to ramp up the effect on non-residents by adding a multiplier and slowly raising this until the desired effect has been achieved. Those non-resident owners who wished to hold on to their investment would at least then be making a significant contribution to the exchequer.
Alistair Newton
Theydon Bois, Essex
Zoe Williams says more houses won’t solve the problem. Not on their own, but if at the same time long-term security of tenure was built in to private tenancies, right to buy was repealed and VAT was removed from repairs and maintenance, more houses would then help to solve the problem.
At present home ownership is the only way to achieve a security, and this situation is vital to the providers of finance when the mortgage debt has reached £1.3tn. This must be supported or the banks could fail again. Supply is therefore strictly limited. If there is not an actual monopoly it looks very like one that is controlled by what seems like a cartel.
When millions of families are without secure homes, even a Tory government might be expected to put their needs before those of City financiers.
Henry Charles Pryor
Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire
Zoe Williams’ London-centric article predicts that the city’s population may shortly be presented with a choice of being “in lifelong servitude to a landlord class, or [moving] to Wales”. I suspect that in many parts of Wales, as in parts of Cornwall where I live, local residents have been priced out of the market by relatively wealthy buyers, often from London, who have not moved there but instead siphoned off the housing stock for investment and second homes.
It gives me no satisfaction that some Londoners are now experiencing the dilution and destruction of their communities because of overseas investment but, should they invest in property in the more picturesque parts of Wales or Cornwall without relocating there, they will continue to harm those communities in the same way that absentee overseas investors are harming theirs.
Ms Williams’ solution might well be right: ban foreign non-residents from buying in London. Might I suggest that ban be extended to second-homers throughout the rest of the country – wherever they come from.
Graham Mitchell
Falmouth, Cornwall
Zoe Williams’ critique of what passes for housing policy surprisingly makes scant reference to the potential contribution of council housing and the role of housing associations, the latter under threat from the government’s perverse extension of right to buy.
But there’s also an issue about what we build, with space standards in new homes significantly smaller than in our European counterparts.
Neither in terms of numbers nor standards can the problems be left to a dysfunctional market.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
The article by Zoe Williams displays a lack of knowledge of how the property and construction industries work. To remove a client base (foreign non-residents) implies that developers will quickly find other buyers. They won’t, and they will stop building. I trust that Zoe will be happy to see her taxes used to support thousands of unemployed construction workers.
But why stop there? Why not stop foreigners buying our cars, jet engines and products of our fashion industries. Is it British goods for British people? Can she now write an article about how to increase the supply of houses.
John Pounder
London
In her rush to criticise John Kay for misstating the number of new houses being built, Zoe Williams seems to accept that building at a rate of 100,000 per year would replace the total existing stock in 270 years. In fact all this tells us is that in 270 years we would build as many houses as we have now; replacing them is a different thing altogether, and to understand how long that would take we need to know how many are being demolished, not built. It is interesting that the DCLG no longer publishes statistics on demolitions, but we can be confident that the numbers are much smaller than for new building, which means that every new house built today is likely to have to last for up to 2,000 years before its turn to be replaced comes round. Which in turn means that the housing crisis is not going away any time soon.
Peter Malpass
Bristol
Zoe Williams’ provocative remarks about the UK housing crisis include “Land values rise faster than the value of housing stock” and reference to “an overhaul in the way we create money”.
Before voting for a new leader, Labour-minded people might be better voting for some new policies addressing key issues, such as: creation of money by the state (or sovereign money) and the abatement of property/land price inflation, as in Larry Elliott’s “Preventing a new housing bubble must be a priority” (Analysis, 9 April 2012).
David Reed
Northampton