How to Find Empty Homes (Part Two - Auctions and Websites)

This is part two of a three or four part look at ways in which individuals and developers can track down empty homes that they may be interested in buying. The place that most empty homes come up for sale is at auction. Auctions are a quick and decisive way of disposing of property, which is why neglected properties that don’t have immediate saleability appeal are often sold through them. Loads of properties are sold through auctions every week.For a comprehensive list of property auction houses in the UK and Ireland see here.

As the country wakes up to the possibilities of rescuing empty homes some websites have sprung up that can really help. The sites feature empty and neglected properties that are not actively marketed elsewhere.The first www.empro.co.uk is a not for profit website featuring empty properties. It is designed simply to put you in touch with owners of properties featured on the website. Currently the website covers West London and Birmingham, but there are plans for expansion. Register your interest in any of the properties featured on the site and your enquiry will be put to the owner. With a bit of luck the owner will contact you to discuss a possible sale. The site is free to use, the start www.propertyrenovate.co.uk this site is a portal for properties in London in need of renovation that are being marketed by estate agents. Many of these are the properties I talked about as lemons in part one and the estate agents may not be marketing them as strongly as other properties on their books. This site lets you see lots of them without the hassle of visiting each estate agent in turn.

Finally for this post nothing beats having a walk around. If you have a reasonably clear idea of the geographical location in which you want to buy a home, you could just have a wander round and see what properties are there. Don’t try and save time and drive instead, you won’t be able to look at the properties properly, or if you do you will probably crash your car. It’s amazing what you will see when you are walking; most roads have a few rather unloved looking houses on them. Some may be empty, and there may be the odd redundant commercial or agricultural building that may inspire you with its potential.

Cross Party Consensus on EDMOs returns

There was a debate on empty dwellings management orders in the House of Lords earlier this week. It was triggered by when two conservative peers, Baronesses Scott and Hanham, prayed against the new legislation.
Baroness Hanham (Conservative) objected, but it turns out her objections were mainly based on misunderstandings over how the legislation will work. A sensible contribution from Baroness Maddock (Liberal Democrat) and a very full response from Baroness Andrews (government minister) put everybody at ease and the objection was withdrawn. Cross party consensus on EDMOs it seems has returned.

New Ideas Must Use Old Buildings - A Tribute to Jane Jacobs

It is with some shame that I admit to having missed the sad news of Jane Jacobs ’ death last week. She would have been 90 yesterday.

There is little I can add to the tributes and obituaries already written about this remarkable and influential woman other than to say her thinking is as relevant now as it ever was.


She was an American born activist who campaigned for community based urban planning. Her philosophy was to think of cities as living beings and ecosystems. She suggested that over time, buildings, streets and neighbourhoods function as dynamic organisms, changing in response to how people interact with them. She fiercely opposed many of the plans in the US and Canada to give cities over to the car and made the case for the reuse of existing buildings. To quote her:
"Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings."

How to Find Empty Homes (part one)

A few months ago I was asked to write an article for the BBC's website on tracking down empty homes. In one paragraph I mentioned that most local authorities had a list of empty properties that you could ask to see. I went on to say that under the Freedom of Information Act you have the right to request the list; all completely true. What I hadn’t anticipated was the effect this was going to have. Hundreds of people who read the article went straight out and made written requests to their local authority. Most I have to say were given the cold shoulder. No doubt many have very good grounds of appeal, but I suspect that most people will have found this a rather dispiriting experience and are still left looking for an empty home to rescue. On the positive side the sheer number of requests is causing local authorities to reconsider their policies on releasing information and many are beginning to take a more positive view. But whatever the rights and wrongs, most people who requested information didn’t get what they want. So I thought this would be a good moment to look at some of the other ways of finding empty homes. There's a lot to say so I'm going to stick with this subject for the next three or four posts. Today I want to look at estate agents:

Estate agents are the first place most people think of when they are looking for a new home. But if you are looking for an empty house to rescue it will appear at first glance that they don’t have what you are looking for. This is not really surprising; estate agents are trying to promote new homes as desirable places to aspire to. A window display full of derelict old wrecks is hardly the image they are looking for.Estate agents will normally have many more properties for sale on their books than those in the window display, on their website or the newspaper advert. Their properties will often fall into three categories. Hot cakes: new on the market quick selling properties that are likely to appeal strongly to the market. Plodders; houses that will sell in the end, but may not be everybody’s cup of tea, and lemons; properties that will only appeal to a specific segment of the market (or nobody all) and take ages to sell. Estate agents want to be associated with hot cakes, they want to give the impression they are selling lots of properties very quickly that are very appealing to purchasers. So these are the properties they market strongly. If they can’t sell a potential purchaser a hot cake they may drag the odd plodder out of the filing cabinet. Empty homes usually fall into the lemons category, and so don’t get promoted much if at all by estate agents. You won’t know whether these properties are for sale unless you ask. Of course estate agents will be happy to sell you any property on their books but they won’t want to alienate you as a purchaser and try and sell you a lemon unless you make it clear that that a lemon is what you want.

Green Fields and Brown Gardens

Before John Prescott’s current set of difficulties emerged he was getting it in the neck over this:
http://www.24dash.com/content/news/viewNews.php?navID=1&newsID=4995News emerged during consultation over the government’s new planning guidelines PPS3 that back gardens are considered to be brownfield sites. The implication is that gardens sold off for housing development would be included within the developers target that 70% of new housing should be built on brownfield sites. Some felt this was a cheat. In fact gardens were considered to be brownfield land under the old set of guidance PPG3 so it’s not really news at all. But it’s raised an interesting debate. Why do we people object to Greenfield development? Some object on grounds of urban sprawl others on grounds of biodiversity. The issue of developing new housing on old gardens divides them. It turns out that back gardens particularly big unkempt ones are havens of biodiversity. Many native insects, birds and small mammals live in them. Farmland on the other hand, particularly arable land, is pretty sterile on an biodiversity level. Monoculture crops, large fields with few hedgerows as well as fertilisers pesticides and herbicides mean that little lives in them except the crop that is being grown. So if you want to protect biodiversity may be building on farmland is OK. Bringing empty homes back into use however raises no such dilemas.

An Easier Way to Buy Empty Homes

If you owned an empty home and you had no imminent plans to fix it up and rent it out you might very well be tempted to sell it. After all, the empty home is bringing in no income and in all likelihood is costing money. In most parts of the UK the property market is pretty flat at the moment meaning no increase in capital value either. The logic is obvious, but the reality different. Most property owners who see the logic have already sold, those that are left have other motivations or perhaps no motivation at all.

Introducing an extra obstacle and expense to selling property might not be the best way to encourage unmotivated owners to sell their property. But next year the government is introducing home information packs (sometimes called seller’s packs) as this rather good new website explains http://www.homeinformationpacks.gov.uk/home.aspx

“The Home Information Pack is a set of documents providing important information about a property such as searches, copies of the deeds and a new document called the Home Condition Report, which assess the condition of a property and its energy efficiency. From 1 June 2007, all home owners in England and Wales will need to prepare a Home Information Pack before putting their home up for sale”. (They’re planned for January 2007 in Scotland)
The seller will also need to pay for it and the government thinks that costs “will be of the order of £600-£700”

The government point out that these cost are not additional and may not have to be paid until the property is sold. All true, but they're costs that are currently borne by the buyer so they are new costs for the seller. This could be a problem, nothong puts the reluctant seller off like a fat bill. But the market is quick to spot an opportunity and nobody is quicker at the moment than the supermarkets. Asda has got in there first and is piloting a low cost estate agency with free home information packs.
http://www.housefund.co.uk/2006/04/supermarkets-food-drink-and-now-homes.html Free home information packs really are a good incentive, if this idea catches on it far from being a disincentive it may even encourage more unmotivated owners onto the market.

At the End of the Empty Property Rainbow

Getting to the day when local authorities can finally use empty Dwellings Management Orders has been a bit like chasing the end of a rainbow. Whenever you think you've got there it magically jumps ahead of you again. The Housing Act was given Royal assent back in November 2004, but the powers were only usable once a commencement order had been passed. This was due in autumn 2005, but slipped into 2006. When the regulations and commencement order finally arrived on April 6. It enabled the parts of the act relating to EDMOs. Well nearly all of them - it turns out that one section (section 134) was not enabled. This section gives Residential Property Tribunals the power to issue interim EDMOs. Without it none of the rest of the EDMO powers are usable. Section 134 it turns out is just delayed a bit and will be enabled on July 6. When this happens we will finally be there.

What then? Well local authorities won’t be on their own - a series of events and publications are planned for early July.

Firstly the ODPM will be publishing a technical guidance note offering interpretation of the act and the regulations.

Secondly the Empty Homes Agency and IDE&A will be publishing a guidance booklet on astrategicc approach to empty homes showing where EDMOs fit within the large range of methods of getting empty homes back into use

And thirdly there will be a series of regional seminars with free places for local authorities offering advice and good practice.

A Couple of Enhancements

You may have noticed that I have deleted a few comments that have been left on this blog. They’re not the rude ones (they’re still there!) but this blog is now old enough for the spammers to have found their way to it. To save them clogging up the site I have added a couple of enhancements. The first means that you need to register to leave a comment. I can see that readers of this site seem to like to remain anonymous, that’s fine. You can register in what ever name you like and it only takes a few seconds. The second change is word verification when you leave a comment you will see a series of letters written in wobbly font you just have to type them out in the box. It’s easy to do but computer generated spam, pingers etc can’t work it out. I know some people have had trouble registering with this site. If it’s not working for you do let me know via email by clicking on my profile at the bottom of the page.

DIY Empty Homes

Big organisations have a tendency to believe that only they can solve the housing crisis. Government thinks this, Regional government thinks, local authorities think this, big house builders think this, big housing associations think this. Of course they all play a very important role but we forget at our peril that by far the most influential player isn’t any of these, it’s the house-buying public. They buy millions of houses every year, they sell millions of houses every year and they sit on wealth that only be measured in trillions of pounds. Even small changes in their buying trends and attitudes have huge impacts on housing demand. With that in mind this survey reported in the Telegraph last week was highly significant. The survey found that:
“41 per cent of the population would consider buying a property that required major work” Challenging the assumption that most people only want a squeaky new house. Of course people have different views of what amounts to major work, but even here the survey suggests that the public is more prepared to take on a wreck than we give them credit for:
“75 per cent of those willing to buy a run-down home happy to buy a house with no central heating. Over half would consider doing extensive replastering, and a quarter would take on a home with damp problems.”
Given that most empty homes require a fair amount of work the survey supports what we have been saying for a couple of years. The property buying public has a huge part to play in bringing empty homes back into use. They have the money to buy; they are willing to do the work. They just need some help in finding suitable properties and persuading the owner to sell. If the big organisations really want to make an impact on empty homes they could do worse than help house buyers with these two problems

Key Worker Homes Lying Empty

Stories about key worker homes lying empty have been rumbling on in the local press for a few months now. This from Milton Keynes earlier this week talks about a key worker development where only 20 of the 100 homes are occupied. http://www.miltonkeynestoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=415&ArticleID=1449100

Deputy leader of Milton Keynes Council Labour group Kevin Wilson put it like this: "It is, frankly, frightening in a city where there is so much housing need to see so many places lying empty."

Key Worker Living was launched in March 2004 replacing the old Starter Homes Initiative. The programme was designed to help up to 12,000 key workers into home ownership over two years, and to keep key workers in the job that they have trained for. Housing Associations have been encouraged to develop ear-marked key worker developments. And there may lie the problem. This report from the current edition of Personnel Today reports a Liberal Democrat view that key workers do not want to live in public sector ghettos.
Nobody denies that there is a problem. Households living off public sector salaries can't afford market prices for housing. But unlike the homeless who live where they are put by councils and housing associations, key workers can exercise choice. If they don't like what they are offered they won't live there.

The government play down the problem http://www.odpm.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1161724 But what ever the rights and wrongs these sorts of stories do nothing to convince the public that millions of new houses are needed. And perhaps augur badly for what might happen if future new developments are badly planned. Just because there is housing need it doesn't follow that people will live anywhere. Badly planned houses become empty houses.