Scotland housing crisis laid bare as 22,000 homes disappear in a year

What a surprise!

GUN - FOOT - SHOOT!

But of course the Scottish government will blame everyone else but itself for it failed policies.

hahahahah! SNP self burial.

Properties being left empty rather than rented out in an anti landlord environment;

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/value-of-empty-homes-in-scotland-estimated-at-3-4bn-as-surcharge-increase-urged

Long-term empty properties in Scotland now have an estimated value of more than £3bn, analysis has revealed.
The number of properties that have been unoccupied for 12 months or more reached 28,280 in 2023 – up 70% from 16,527 in 2014.

Reply to the comment left by Monty Bodkin at 05/03/2024 - 11:13
I read the article on properties being left empty, rather than rented out. It is hardly a surprise that it's happening.

Labour's antidote to the situation is no surprise either: "Let's tax the f***ers to incentivise them to return those properties back to use".
That's really going to work (not).

Despite the rhetoric, politicians of all colours, do not appear to understand supply and demand . Their policies, not landlords behaviours, have led to this perfect storm. They will now spend the next 5 years scratching their heads and blaming their predecessors, meanwhile the PRS shrinks. What a bloody mess and so avoidable - it's very frustrating and so sad...

What should also be considered in these figures, is that the population of Scotland is less than a tenth of England, so by extrapolation, that's equivalent to losing a quarter of a million rental properties. That's a shocking figure.

Is it any surprise? The government departments should really be reading these pages and taking notes on how landlords feel, because that directly translates into the actions we take, and the continuing decline of the PRS.

I’m selling up and getting out also, there are very few incentives to stay in an industry where your trying to provide a service and make a profit, but instead your berated for your efforts and made to feel like it’s all your fault ?

Reply to the comment left by Mark Pickersgill at 05/03/2024 - 11:42
I think what all of the politicians have failed to grasp (the SNP is just the worst offender) is that the PRS provides choice. In the past couple of decades there has been a dramatic increase in Scotland in the proportion of residential accommodation offered by housing associations. But what the SNP has done is to attack the PRS and when they did it they were attacking choice and freedom of movement. The consequence of those policies is that when tenants who needed something that was not being delivered by all those housing associations the tenants who needed that choice inevitably competed for the decreasing supply of available accommodation and drove rents up.

All that attacking the PRS does is to restrict tenant choice and whilst that goes down well in totalitarian societies like China and Russia (and apparently historically in one-party-states like Scotland 🙂 )it doesn't work well in states that value freedom of movement, freedom of speech and democracy.

The bottom line is, if you are a Scottish tenant, be really careful what you vote for as you might become less free.

On a related matter. It has just been revealed that the SNP received £1.35 million from Westminster to help opposition parties with costs. It only got a single major donation of £5,000 from a living donor and £253K from dead people...so that's not money coming from all those young people living in Glasgow then.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1874968/snp-donations-Electoral-Commission

Apparently the figures show that the SNP received £1.6 million in taxpayers' money, with £1.35 million coming from Westminster funds to help opposition parties with costs.

I don't get to vote on what goes on in Scotland but Scottish voters do get to vote on what happens to me. Maybe the SNP should stop Westminster-bashing. And maybe the SNP should acknowledge to all its young voters where its money is coming from.