Empty homes 'turn off neighbours'
Updated on 10 December 2007
One in four people who have lived near an empty property claim it had an impact on them, with problems ranging from lower house prices to higher crime, a survey shows.
Around 27% of people have lived on the same street as a home that is empty, with 22% of these people claiming the property had a negative impact on the value of their own home, according to Britain's biggest mortgage lender Halifax.
A quarter of people said they thought an unlived in property had put potential buyers off the area, 22% said it had marred their enjoyment of the street they lived in and one in five said they thought it attracted crime.
Halifax said house prices were around 17% lower in areas with high proportions of empty homes, slashing the value of a house by an average of £30,000.
It added that 12 of the 15 local authorities with a high level of empty properties were also among the 20% of most deprived areas in England.
There has been a 6% fall in the number of homes in England that are empty during the three years to April 2006, but there were still 288,763 unoccupied properties at that date.
Halifax said that although so-called empty dwelling management orders were introduced in July 2006, giving local authorities the power to take control of empty homes and bring them back into use, just six of these had been granted and none of them were for areas with high levels of empty homes.
The group is calling on the Government to extend the reduced 5% VAT rate for restoring an empty home to apply to all properties that have been empty for more than six months, rather than just ones that have been empty for more than two years.
It also wants local authorities to unify their approach to council tax reductions for empty homes, and for these discounts to only apply if the owner makes the property their primary residence, finds a lodger or sells it within 12 months.
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