The Daily Mail publishes a load of 'haunting' photos of a derelict mansion nr. Windsor in Buckinghamshire:
If the owners were expected to cough up £x0,000 LVT every year, then once they lost interest, they would have sold it to somebody who wanted to live there and keep it in good nick.
The tax costs the new purchaser nothing; it comes off the purchase price, in the same way as you deduct likely repair costs from the purchase price of a building.
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UPDATE: Bayard in the comments points out the Mail article has been pulled, but there's a cut and paste of it here.
Put On Your Big Boy Pants, Maybe?
4 hours ago
10 comments:
This was my original motivation for looking into LVT many years ago. There are derelict mansions like these hidden away all over the country. The one which I first came across, as a young lad in the 1960s, was Slains Castle which is associated with Bram Stoker. Its roof was removed in 1925 specifically to avoid rates -- with predictable results. Since then I've kept my eyes open and found more such buildings in the depths of the countryside than you might imagine.
Looks like the Mail has spotted that you've used the article to support LVT and removed it from the online version.
D, this only forms about 1% of the arguments for LVT, the other 99% are much better.
B, well spotted, luckily the Internet never forgets and I have posted a new link.
True. However it is a very concrete and visible one and the one that led me on to the others.
"If the owners were expected to cough up £x0,000 LVT every year, then once they lost interest in living there, they would have sold it to somebody who wanted to live there and keep it in good nick."
But, it's near Slough, which is a high demand area anyway.
I did trace one document, which appears to be related to a request back to 2002 to turn the building into offices (http://www.rbwm.gov.uk/pam/docservlet?docId=104501181&filename=581188.TIF&mimeType=image/tiff). I'm half wondering if the words "listed" had something to do with the farm running away from it.
D, true. I started liking LVT because it was nice and simple.
TS, yes it's a high demand area which is why the LVT would be £x0,000 and not £y,000.
Good digging there, we've covered "listing" before, it usually makes things worse.
TS, I looked on EH's website and, according to that, it wasn't listed.
Mark, like LVT, listing makes things better WRT keeping buildings in good repair, as it is against the law to neglect them, not that the law is widely enforced in this case. In fact, if we had LVT, the fact that your building is listed would reduce the value of the plot it sits on and so reduce your LVT, leaving you, theoretically, with more money with which to maintain it.
B, good point, LVT goes with the grain of 'listing', the advantages and disadvantages would net off.
Mark,
I'm not sure, unless you can apply LVT to a plot rather than say postal code area.
Listed buildings are something that are an imposition on the owner, but something that everyone gains from. I still haven't worked out how to properly deal with that, but in theory the public should pay the owners for keeping them in original condition.
TS, of course you can.
The most sensible way of doing this is to have a sliding scale for different sized homes (sub-text: different sized plots) in each postcode sector.
So you can read off what the LVT on the building would be in the absence of the listing. Then you have to have another scale of discounts depending on how restrictive the listing restrictions are. The fact that I haven't yet bothered to work out this discount is irrelevant.
If you get the LVT discount correct, then the listed building will have a market value on a sale the same as a similar sized one without the listing in the vicinity.
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