An investigation by Sky News and a housing campaigner have revealed that there are some 33,993 vacant council properties in England alone, the highest number since 2009.
They include several residences that have been sealed off on an estate in Lambeth, south London, for more than two decades and 144 flats in a boarded-up tower block in the bordering borough of Southwark that has been empty since 2015.
Kwajo Tweneboa, the campaigner working with Sky, has tweeted the top 10 councils that have the most empty publicly-owned homes. Landlord Today has identified the political parties that control the councils in question.
- Melton - 1,810; (Independent and Labour coalition)
- Southwark - 1,588; (Labour)
- Ealing - 1,183; (Labour)
- Sheffield - 946; (Labour largest party, no overall majority)
- Lambeth - 726; (Labour)
- Newham - 688; (Labour)
- Gateshead - 618; (Labour)
- Leeds - 589; (Labour)
- Southampton - 577; (Labour)
- Nottingham - 511. (Labour)
Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, tweeted in response “appalling, and to think these local authorities are in charge of regulating private rented homes when they literally cannot get their own houses in order.”
Tweneboa told Sky News "you've got people sleeping on the streets. You've got people who are sleeping in garages and storage containers. Yet we've got thousands of homes sat empty, council homes up and down the country, which aren't being used. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's a complete dereliction of duty and failure to care for those that need it most."
The Local Government Association blames a shortage of funding for councils and a spokesperson told Sky News that in many cases "the council doesn't have the money in place to be able to refurbish them and bring them back into use as council homes."
Lambeth council told Sky "Lambeth is committed to bringing empty homes back into use as quickly as possible. The majority of our empty properties have been vacant for less than six months."
Shelter reveals that social rents are 60% cheaper than in the PRS
Social housing tenants enjoy rents that are 60% cheaper than private rented sector (PRS) tenants are paying, Shelter says.
The charity says the difference is £828 per month, on average, and is calling on all political parties to build more affordable social homes. It says that tenants in London would be £1,400 better off, while those in the East of England would save £630.
And in the South East, renters would be £730 a month better off.
‘Social housing enables people to live better lives’
The charity’s chief executive, Polly Neate, said “Social housing enables people to live better lives, but we just don’t have enough of it – not by a long shot. Decades of failure to build genuinely affordable social homes has left the country in a dire state. We continually hit shameful records with numbers of homeless children and sky-high rents, as more and more families are plunged into homelessness. For many, this means years of upheaval and uncertainty, stripping the chance for families to set down roots, for children to thrive at school and taking the power away from people to live the life they want.”
Living in temporary accommodation
Shelter also says a record 145,800 children are homeless and living in temporary accommodation with their families.
It argues that with affordable social homes, those families would be ‘insulated’ from homelessness, and it would help keep communities together.
Ms Neate said “the housing emergency has been wilfully ignored for too long. All the signs point to one solution and it’s the only one that works. Now that a General Election has been called, we cannot afford to waste any time. All political parties must commit to building genuinely affordable social homes – we need 90,000 a year over 10 years to end the housing emergency for good.”
Thousands of rental homes hoovered up by US giant in bet on Britain’s housing shortage
US private equity giant Blackstone has agreed to acquire a raft of new homes across the UK as it looks to cash in on soaring rents. Up to 1,750 homes have been snapped up by Blackstone after it struck a £580m deal with developer Vistry.
The agreement is Blackstone’s second with Vistry in less than a year as it pushes further into Britain’s rental sector.
So far it has agreed to spend £1.4bn on more than 4,500 homes across the UK, supported by its investment partner Regis. It is the latest sign that Britain’s rental sector is attracting greater levels of investment from private equity groups and pension funds.
The likes of Aviva Investors, Legal & General and Axa have all recently piled cash into the so-called build-to-rent sector, building rental properties to be managed long-term by institutional funds rather than buy-to-let landlords. They are looking to capitalise on the extreme imbalance between supply and demand across Britain’s rental sector, which has been fuelled by private landlords selling up just as high levels of immigration push up demand.
National rent growth peaked at a record high of 9.2% in March, before cooling to 8.9% in April, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, price rises have been even more extreme in London, with rents climbing by 10.8% year on year in April.
Previously, investment in the build-to-rent sector was concentrated heavily on blocks of flats in cities that were let out primarily to graduates or white-collar workers. However, funds are focusing increasingly on rental homes in suburban locations, targeting families unable to buy.
Blackstone’s deal with Vistry is for a portfolio of homes concentrated in the South East of England.
It will be managed by Leaf Living, which was set up by Blackstone in 2021 to manage single-family homes to rent.
James Seppala, head of European Real Estate at Blackstone, said “Institutional private capital can play an important role in providing high-quality housing stock across the UK, particularly in the private rented sector which is significantly undersupplied today. Partnerships such as these can meaningfully accelerate the delivery of new homes and help alleviate structural undersupply across the sector.”
The first homes will be completed by the end of June this year, with the majority finished within the next two years. Blackstone manages more than $1 trillion in assets and is the world’s largest alternative asset manager.
Single-family homes are the fastest-growing part of Britain’s build-to-rent sector in terms of investment.
While investment in build-to-rent flats roughly halved between 2021 and 2023, shrinking from £4.6bn to £2.6bn, investment in single-family homes nearly doubled from £1.1bn to £2bn, according to analysis by JLL property consultants. In the first three months of this year, single-family homes accounted for the largest share of investment in the build-to-rent sector.
Investors piled £620m into build-to-rent family homes, £170m more than they spent on build-to-rent flats. The single-family build-to-rent sector is expanding at a time when overall housebuilding has slumped, as high mortgage rates squeeze demand.
In the last three months of 2023, the number of starts on new homes slumped by 51% year-on-year to 19,080, government data showed.
Greg Fitzgerald, chief executive at Vistry Group said “by working in partnership with organisations like Leaf Living we can maximise the number of high-quality homes we deliver every year. This year we are on track to deliver more than a 10% increase in new home completions, playing a key part in helping to address the UK’s acute housing shortage.”