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Increasing the tax on second homes shifts the balance towards more young people getting on the ladder and the second-home-owners and BTL property hoarders getting fucked over.
Doesn't that just result in those costs being passed onto the people who then try to rent them?
mmccarthy-
In theory it makes them more expensive to hold onto and therefore increases the incentive to sell. In practise the tax would have to be far higher than any of our politicians can stomach.
Remember that changes like this tend to affect things at the edges - it will cause things which are marginal to no longer be worth it and everything in the middle just shifts around.
rhowe
There aren't enough houses. That's the fundamental issue and it means that someone gets fucked no matter what your policies are. At the moment it is all the young people, and locals in places like Wales and Cornwall where second homes are common. Increasing the tax on second homes shifts the balance towards more young people getting on the ladder and the second-home-owners and BTL property hoarders getting fucked over. Seems pretty reasonable to put the population of this country over the financial interests of a small proportion of wealthy people.
Alternatively we could start building a million houses a year... any day now...