Tim Worstall

The Death of Private Property.

How in hell did this happen?

There is something unsettling about this, just as
there is about John Prescott’s new law that allows homes left empty for
a year or more to be seized and let out to local authorities for a
period of up to seven years. This comes into force next April and will
revive the compulsory requisitioning of private property for the first
time since the war. The Government says the orders would be a last
resort when agreement could not be reached with a property’s owner,
"but where that consent is not forthcoming we do not apologise for
granting local authorities powers to secure occupation without the need
to obtain consent".

So, we have a pattern emerging
here. If you do not use the cash you have left in a bank account, the
Government believes it should decide what happens to it. And if you
have a house that you want to leave vacant for two or three years, it
could be taken from you because the state says so.

I knew there was talk about it but thought it had been beaten back. Seriously, the local council’s goons can come in and take your house just because you’re not using it the way they want?

An example. I own a flat in Bath. The council insisted that if I rented it out I would have to do about 10 grand’s worth of work to do so. I could live in it but I could not rent it. As you may know I actually live in Portugal. It took some months to find the money, further to find a builder etc. Then some months more to get the council round to agree that the work had been done. Elapsed time was in fact 12 months. Thus the place was empty for one year.

I agree that it’s unlikely that BANES would, in such circumstances, actually turn the place into a Council Flat for the next 7 years (to the detriment of the value of the other flats in the building, of course) but the point is that the law now says they can. Basing the law on bureaucrats "being reasonable" doesn’t work.

Sadly, there are still those who don’t see the need for a bloody revolution.

In

13 responses

  1. Rub-a-dub Avatar
    Rub-a-dub

    I woke this morning to the Beeb telling me that the Government now intend to redistribute those extra home allocations imposed on the South according to where prices have risen most sharply [repeatedly bangs head against wall muttering ‘markets’]

    Reply
  2. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    Sadly, there are still those who don’t see the need to check their bloody facts before embarking on another incoherent rant.
    The fact is, a council cannot simply decide to take your flat over for seven years, as that would require a final ‘Empty Homes Management Order’, which can only be brought in if agreement can’t be reached on a preceding interim EHMO. Interim EHMOs have to be approved by a Residential Property Tribunal, which has to be satisfied that there is no reasonable prospect that the proprty will be occupied in the near future. Properties undergoing repairs or renovation would also be excepted.
    Clearly on both counts your flat could not be served with an interim EHMO, let alone a final one.
    Still, I look forward to your inevitable TechCentralStation article using this very example.

    Reply
  3. dink Avatar
    dink

    oh, the revolution is comming

    Reply
  4. APL Avatar
    APL

    Jim: “Sadly, there are still those who don’t see the need to check their bloody facts before embarking on another incoherent rant.”
    And those who can’t see the intrinsic ‘wrongness’ of a policy of confiscation.
    Jim: “The fact is, a council cannot simply decide to take your flat over for seven years, as that would require a final ‘Empty Homes Management Order’, which can only be brought in if agreement can’t be reached on a preceding interim EHMO. Interim EHMOs have to be approved by a Residential Property Tribunal, which has to be satisfied that there is no reasonable prospect that the proprty will be occupied in the near future.”
    All that proves is that the council having made up its mind to victimise an individual owner, can simply put him/her through an interminable wringer, during which process the owner will recive an offer that he can’t possibly refuse from a friend of a friend of a member of the local authority. Since he can’t sell the property because no one in their right mind will buy it. He can’t rent it because the council won’t let him, he will give up and sell on the QT.
    Next, miraculously, the council will release those renovation grants that were mysteriously held up for years, to the new owner.
    The property will be renovated at the local authorities expense and back on the rental market under a new owner within 3 months.
    Jim: “Properties undergoing repairs or renovation would also be excepted.”
    Nah! Impossible corruption simply doesn’t exist local authorities of the UK.

    Reply
  5. Remittance Man Avatar
    Remittance Man

    Jim,
    Doesn’t it scare you that the whole process is aimed at removing property from its rightful owners? Maybe you think that owning an empty house when some people live in squalor is evil. Well, that’s your right. But once you’ve accepted the principle that it’s all right for the state to steal private property based some concept of “evil” who’s to say when it should stop?
    By any normal sort of measure athe average person needs no ore than three pairs of shoes. But believe me, I have a sister in law who would put Imelda Marcos to shame. She couldn’t care less if she hasn’t worn a particular pair for months and that there are poor people with only one pair of plimsols to their name. Anyone trying to take away some of her excess shoe stock is likely to depart the scene minus some very personal bits of his anatomy.
    Now before Jim scolds me for using a stupid example I will admit that, yes, this is a fairly dumb example, but I use it to illustrate that taking any private property, for what ever “good” reason you may have is wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong.
    If someone is unfortunate enough not to be able to use an asset he or she owns (or too stupid for that matter), what business is it of the state to interfere?
    And as if straight theft isn’t enough; to make it seem legal and above board the system will require an army of inspectors and tribunals. Doesn’t it also trouble you that this systematised theft is to be “governed” by a huge number of otherwise productive adults paid from taxation. Unless you beleive that all these housing inspectors and members of Residential Property Tribunals will work for free. Do you really think they will work without their fat salaries and index linked pensions paid by the dwindling part of the population that actually works for a living?
    The Remittance Man

    Reply
  6. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    “Doesn’t it scare you that the whole process is aimed at removing property from its rightful owners?”
    No, because the whole process is not aimed at removing property from its rightful owners. Ownership of the property would not change under an EDMO. All that would change is that instead of the property imposing continuous costs on the owner (council tax, dilapidation, security, etc) and everyone else (blight, unaffordable housing, homelessness), the state would be *paying* the owner of the property for its temporary use, on top of whatever grants it may also be offering to bring the place up to a reasonable condition if the owner is too cheap or feckless to do it themselves. Frankly, I think it’s a sweet deal.

    Reply
  7. P. Froward Avatar
    P. Froward

    Jim, if it really is a sweet deal, make it voluntary and see if anybody signs up. I’m guessing that you’ll find that unacceptable.

    Reply
  8. P. Froward Avatar
    P. Froward

    Better yet, if it is a “sweet deal”, you’ll have affluent people doing it for profit, at the taxpayers’ expense. So you’d need to establish a Fecklessness Test, to exclude over-fecked owners. Perhaps a Fecklessness Examiner would have to be hired, with assistants and a budget. Yes, that would be a fine thing: How better to provide housing for the disadvantaged than to spend millions examining the feck of the affluent?
    The whole scheme is insane. It would be far better to stock the Fecklessness Board with the disadvantaged people who need housing, pay them extravagantly, and let them spend their days examining the idiots who dream these things up. On their days off, they could participate in community theater experiments with Madeleine Bunting.
    And then everybody would be happy.

    Reply
  9. Rob Read Avatar
    Rob Read

    Better put a big tax on explosives so the govt can get some money from all the future Guy Fawkes they are creating.

    Reply
  10. APL Avatar
    APL

    Jim: “Ownership of the property would not change under an EDMO.”
    Absolute bollocks. If you cannot choose to do with your own property what you want, then the concept of ownership means nothing at all.

    Reply
  11. Jim Avatar
    Jim

    Then the concept of ownership already means nothing at all, because people can already not choose to do with their own property whatever they want.
    You already need planning permission if you want to significantly develop your own property. This policy just extends that to preventing people from leaving homes empty for years to the extent that they become eyesores and blight surrounding homeowners (what about their property rights?) while homelessness and overcrowding continue to rise due to a shortage of housing. And it has been introduced precisely because the government is (wrongly, in my view) too scared of violating the precious property rights of empty home owners with compulsory puchase orders.

    Reply
  12. Remittance Man Avatar
    Remittance Man

    And, inadvertently, Jim highlights the problem with all government control – it deprives us of the right to do things (or not to do things) with our own stuff.
    Just because we already have a load of restrictions on our rights surely isn’t any sort of justification for slapping on yet more regulations.
    “Well, why are you complaining about us taking away your house? It wasn’t yours to start with.”
    Somehow that just doesn’t sound right, does it?
    RM

    Reply
  13. Maureen Avatar
    Maureen

    Renting a house is fraught with troubles even for those doing it voluntarily, and able to take their choice among would-be tenants. My grandmother, for instance, faced huge repair bills from the wear-and-tear put on her retirement house by her tenants who lived there before she could retire to it.
    So putting a load of miscellaneous strangers into someone’s house against their will is basically saying, “Say goodbye to your house, because we are going to trash it and make it unliveable for anyone.”
    Whereas a house with the furniture under dustcovers and enough rat poison set out can stay the same way for years, especially if you keep an eye on it and clean it every once in a while.

    Reply

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