1,180 Bexley Properties lie empty – an injustice for the 4,612 households on the Bexley Council House Waiting List?

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Easy problems should have easy solutions. Right? 
For problems like Bexley Borough’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. Unfortunately for those desperately seeking to purchase or let a property, that takes a lot of time and huge amounts of money. So what other solutions are there?
The most recent set of figures from 2015 states that there are 1,180 empty homes in the Bexley Borough area. Why not put them back into the system and help ease the Bexley Borough housing crisis? 4,612 Bexley households (not people – households) are on the waiting list for council houses. Surely, we can all agree that it is immoral for property to be left empty for years and years with the burgeoning council house waiting list, not to mention the issue of homelessness.
A different story emerges, however, when you look deeper into the numbers. Of the 1,180 homes lying empty, only 395 were empty for more than six months. The local authority has to report a property being empty, even if it’s only for a week. This means that many of these properties are awaiting new homeowners or, in the case of rental properties, new tenants. Moreover, some are certainly being refurbished and renovated, while others have homeowners who are anxious to sell but cannot find a buyer.
In reality, the number of genuinely long term empty properties is only a tiny drop in the ocean of the 92,604 properties in Bexley London Borough Council. Even if all those empty homes were filled with cheerful tenants tomorrow, they would only meet a small fraction of Bexley Borough’s housing needs.
What does this mean for all the homeowners and landlords of Bexley Borough? Well, with demand so high, especially for rental properties, the rental market is certain to grow because young people cannot buy and councils don’t have the money to build new houses. This in turn bolsters property prices as landlords continue to buy at the lower end of the market (starter homes, etc.), in turn sustaining the rest of the market as those sellers move up the property ladder, releasing others to buy on again.
One place for landlords and homeowners to find this information is on the Bexley Borough Property News Blog: www.bexleyproperty.co.uk You’re also more than welcome to give us a call on 01322 559955 or pop in for a chat. Our office is located in the heart of Bexley Village (next door to the King’s Head Public House).


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