The question I get asked a from property owners and in particular landlords is “How long can I leave a house empty?”
The simple answer is you can leave it as empty as long as you want.
But …you will find that you might get the council coming around knocking on your door if it’s been empty for a great length of time. They don’t like to see empty properties. They have an ulterior motive in mind that if they’re seeing empty property, then they will want to up the council tax on them. For example, for County Durham council will seek to DOUBLE the council tax if your property is left empty for more than two years. And not only that, County Durham is one of the most expensive places in the country for council tax, believe it or not.
And that doesn’t matter whether you’ve just got a little two bedroom terraced house or whether you’ve got a big mansion, it’s all expensive. So it can be a big drain on your cash flow if you’ve got an investment property especially ifs empty. You maybe can’t afford to do it up and you’ve got your mortgage to pay. Add to that double council tax, which could certainly be over £200 a month quite easily, on that alone, leaving you property empty can be prove to be very unaffordable.
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Durham Council are also in consultation to bring in a 200% council tax increase if you property is left empty for more than five years. So you could end up paying three times your council tax. That’s massive. And people need to weigh these facts up when they’ve got an empty property, against what they can afford to sell for because that’s going to be a big drain on their pocket.
My advice is always have your property occupied.
It’s a massive drain on your cash flow. So if you want to have a chat about anything like this, please feel free to give me a ring any time. There’s no obligation whatsoever. I’ll just tell you as it is. I’m not looking to sign you up or say well I can do this or that for you. But what I will do is give you an honest, good advice. So please feel free to give me a call on 0191 486 2386 anytime.
About Richard Mews
Richard has 31+ years of property experience, has been Chairman of several regeneration committees and has helped more than 600 homeowners and landlords get easy, stress-free personal solutions for selling their property. Richard’s goal is to give you unbiased help to receive a quick house sale, even if that means not working with him.
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