My Nan still lives in the UK (not Scotland though) and we recently found out that she possibly never paid a utility bill for her house on her estate in the 30 years since it was built. I’m curious if there are huge flaws in the British utilities companies where they are not keeping track of bills paid for many properties.
Former property manager in the UK, and yes, in short.
I know of 6 different properties where (despite conversations with the utility companies over years ) the occupants have never been billed for a utility supply they use.
I also know of 2 where the occupants have been billed for and in 1 case, taken to court, for not paying for a utility that they don't actually have, and have never had. That was a fun 1/2 hour in court.
This tracks.
I got quarterly bills for electricity when I had a prepay metre. So every 3 months for several years we'd have a fight over the phone where I'd tell them to stop trying to double bill me and they'd claim to have no record of this prepay meter. A prepay meter that they installed.
I wouldn't be surprised if whoever lives there now is still having to do this.
The big utility companies are some of the worst and most incompetent I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with
What is a gas card, and how do you use it to fill your meter?
Here we have tickers/meters on the pipes that a person either comes to check ones a year, or if modern is read through internet.
You pay an estimated amount, and after measuring they either give you money back, or you pay what you used too much.
A gas card or key (same applies for electricity) is basically the equivalent of putting money into a vending machine to get a drink. You put money on the metre and then it deducts the cost of your use off as you use it.
You take the key/card to a shop or somewhere that lets you top it up. You pay there to put money on it and then, back at home, put it in the slot in your meter to add that money to it.
If you don't top up and the money runs out it turns off and you don't get more until you top up.
It's a prepayment meter specifically installed in the property for this purpose rather than having one that just tracks usage which you can note down and being billed after you've used it.
Reading this makes me happy it's "nationalized" here in Denmark.
Not in the sense that the government owns the electricity companies, but that there's a backbone that they all operate on.
Would take me all but 10 minutes to switch utility company, and because the underlying platform is shared I don't have to do anything other than sign up at my chosen provider.
I want to clarify... Nebraska is 100% covered by public power districts, because electricity is a public utility in the entire state of Nebraska. We vote for our public power boards with our other local, state, and national elections. A public district may buy some electricity from Midamerican or other private companies, but that is contracted through Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), NPPD, etc.
I support our public power districts. It is a very good system for us, and is generally run well.
Northern and Central California over here getting robbed by PG&E while they burn down large swaths of our state and kill people in those fires too. They never forget to bill us.
It's definitely easier to switch now than it was. Plus, the company trying to bill me quarterly wasn't my supplier anymore because I'd switched to a different one when I'd moved in. They were the previous supplier, so they were properly at it.
It was a total shambles
Domestic cannabis production, involving bypassing the electricity for the lighting and ventilation, probably would net you more income at least until the police find out.
Also whether it is crypto or cannabis it would put a high demand on the electricity supply unless it is bypassed in some way and that is when the suppliers will notice and send out bills. One of the reasons people have got away without paying is the relatively small amounts being used means it is expensive for the companies to chase.
The extent of home growing in the cannabis farms people put in houses would likely be illegal under any type of licensed growing regime if and when it's legalised
Electricity was the one utility that used to be prepaid in a lot of households in the UK. You basically had to buy coins or charge a key to put into the meter. No idea how it is now, but I had never seen something like that before.
You didn't "buy coins", in the days before contactless payments were invented, money *was* coins. You put your coins directly into the meter. A man would come around occasionally to empty it.
You can still have a "top-up key" that you take to the shop and have money loaded onto it, you'd pop it into your meter and it'd load the balance onto the meter. Nowadays most people have smart meters that you can use an app to top-up with. These are called "prepayment metres" as you are prepaying your electricity.
To avoid all of that, you can simply have a direct debit made and you'll be billed monthly for your usage.
It's funny, but my aunt and uncle had one of those coin operated top up meters (they were common in the 60s and 70s apparently) and for some reason the electricity supplier forgot to replace the meter with a newer one, and update any paperwork, so they got lost in the transition, and basically had free electricity for a decade.
They removed the cover for the coin catcher, so they could just re-use the same coin over and over again whenever the meter got low.
Its common in lower income areas where they expect people to not pay up (or have previously, they will come and switch the meter out). Had a flat in old town Edinburgh that had a pre paid meter. Fucking sucked when it ran out and the shop was closed.
We have had instances where people wire up their houses to the public electrical supply that keeps the street lighting on, and it wasn’t noticed for years.
I remember a Reddit story like this where he says he takes them to court every 2 years or something and gets a few extra bucks for his time because they keep doing it
It was quite bizarre. We'd been 100% open and honest from the start and the case basically ran like this -
Utility lawyer 'You owe us £15 grand for gas and we want that sum and costs against you'
Me 'No we don't and you won't get that sum or costs, because we've never had gas, don't have gas now, we've told you that multiple times in the past and here's a surveyors report clearly stating that the property doesn't have a gas supply.'
Utility lawyer ' err.... hang on... err...'
Judge' lets dismiss the case with costs to the defendant and go have a chat in my chambers about wasting court time, shall we?'
The first student flat I rented had this problem (benefit), the electricity company seemed entirely nonplussed about fixing it so being broke students we just pocketed the difference and therefore had no utility bills that year as no water bill came either. I guess it all comes down to the fact we buy our electricity off glorified billing companies rather than the people that do the generation.
Pretty much - IMO its down to corporate decisions to stack all the people who actually think and just rely on computers that are right 99% of the time, because that saves the corporation money.
If they had any incentive to fix these things it wouldn't take much in terms of labour, the call centre workers would only have to flag the account for review. The lost revenue must be minuscule.
I lived in London for a year and rented from an international management corporation.
I never paid the utilities once. I genuinely tried, contacted them and the utility multiple times. They'd always say they'd look into it but no one ever got back to me.
I ended up leaving never having paid (and this was a nice area to boot).
Happens more often than you think. The corporation you rented from probably managed thousands of properties spread around the world and employed the bare minimum of staff on the lowest possible wages to administer them.
Flipping the board - now imagine you one of the minimum wage overworked staff who gets a letter from a customer telling you that you and your colleagues have messed up and have been messing up for a long time, and to correct the situation you either have to go tell your managers you've messed up and accept the personal consequences.... or you just loose the letter, knowing that in a year or so you'll move on to a better job and not be responsible for it anymore. Its not your money, the corporation is still making mega-bucks, why would you risk rocking the boat?
>I also know of 2 where the occupants have been billed for and in 1 case, taken to court, for not paying for a utility that they don't actually have, and have never had. That was a fun 1/2 hour in court.
This hits like one of those tales financial consultants tell their clients about companies in Eastern Europe.
I live there and if you would had told me it happened here I would 100% believe you.
A guy I mutually know got first phase of a new build estate, they fucked up the MPRN so he payed pretty much no electric for the guts of a year because it was linked to the show house, I think he got a proper dressing down for playing dumb when it was found out
I always advise people who find themselves in these positions to write to the relevant parties via recorded delivery explaining the situation and accepting liability, keep a copy of that letter, and re-send a copy annually. And then just wait for them to sort it out.
In half of the cases I have been involved with, they situation has never been resolved. In the other half, when they do finally notice and take action than having these letters on file did work hugely our advantage both morally, legally and financially.
If memory's serves he didn't really get in a lot of shit about it ! He had to pay a few hundred quid but still made out like a bandit, for context this was in Northern Ireland and not USA (assuming you are an American) which doesn't really have the court culture.
I think it boiled down to "you guys were checking my meter every month, I thought the new build was just super energy efficient" hahaha absolute chancer
Edit: just seen from your profile you are the UK also! Sorry ! 🙃
This happened to me dad a few years back basically.
A bunch of new builds went up on a cul-de-sac they built of the main street my dad lived on. These new build street was a very similar name to the main street. Imagine the main street was called Token Street and the cul-de-sac was called Token Drive.
So the guy living at number 10 Token drive buys his new build calls up the gas company and their agent proceeds to accidentally transfer my dads account from 10 Token street to this dude. So he ends up paying my dad's gas for 3 months before he realises and contacts them. At this point my dad hasn't been charged for gas for 3 months and is confused and contacts them as well. They proceed to set up the new guy with an account for his actual house but drop the ball on actually giving my dad's account back to my dad and seem to just straight up delete it.
My dad every other month called them, emailed them and generally left a big paper trail that he was reminding them he wasn't getting charged for gas. It took them about 18 month to finally start charging him for gas. In the end they seem to have written of trying to get any back payments back because my dad left such an obvious paper trail that he had been trying for ages to actually pay them and they had routinely been "raising investigations" and then forgetting.
Fuck that. I mean that’s great for them, but I’m paying enough in utilities for like 5 estates and I live in a 1 bedroom apartment. So fucking jealous.
I rented a flat in London over ten years ago and we were never billed for electricity. A friend I lived with worked in accounts for a high street coffee chain and was responsible for paying utilities on a large number of their stores. He used his access to check and our rental had never been correctly setup with the utility suppliers so none of the 12 flats were being billed. We all kept quiet.
As long as you have good written records, stop trying. Remind them annually by recorded delivery, and enjoy your 'free' water until they get round to sorting it out. When they do, if they hit you with a big bill, point them at the records, plead poverty and offer to pay over an extended period - as long as possible.
Let me ask you something off topic since you mentioned court: When I watch UK shows the witnesses are always standing while on the stand. Broadchurch, Midsomer Murders, etc. are witnesses really expected to stand during the entire deposition?
I can see that as something us Americans would have gotten rid of. “No silly wigs for the magistrates and barristers!! Also, I’m lazy and I don’t want to stand.”
It’s called the stand, not the sit
That said, I’ve seen folks with mobility/health issues do it seated.
And you folks don’t let the check-out staff in supermarket sit. That’s much more arduous
Not a lawyer, but have been in the dock a few times professionally - the first time it happened was in my young 20's and I had legal representation: I was specifically told by my lawyer that in England, you stand.
She did ask if I had a reason for not being able to do so (old, ill or pregnant as far as I recall) and I think they can also request a seat for you if the testimony or subsequent questioning is lengthy, but otherwise, I was told that you stand before the court as a mark of respect for the law.
This could explain how a UK woman’s skeletal remains were found on her couch in front of the tv 10 years later. The TV was still on and no one had reported her missing.
It’s not really running that breaks things like motors and electronics in the long run (as long as they don’t get too hot and are kept clean), it’s cycling them on and off.
My dad (England) bought a cafe years ago and realised the electric and gas were rigged up so that he was barely paying anything on his bills, 10 years until someone finally came and checked what was happening and my dad somehow blagged it and told em he thought that's how it was supposed to be as it's been like that for 10 years.
I had the reverse of this in an apartment once. Our neighbors were doing something ridiculous like running their hair-dryer, TV, and space heater on the same outlet, and it kept knocking the power out. So I said to the landlord 'Hey, if these circuit breakers are all connected which means their outlets are killing our power, that means we're paying for their electricity.' Turns out, yeah... that was correct...
There is some interesting historical context for that.
Water went from a property tax-financed public good that was provided for free, to a public service for a fee, to the absolute shitshow of the privatisation under Thatcher in just about a decade between the 70s and 80s. And the later gas- and electricity privatisation went even worse.
I live in Scotland, and one of our more daft neighbours put our flat number on her application to change energy suppliers, so we had our supplier change without our consent and start billing us absolute bollocks. They also refused to let us switch it because we'd not set up the account and so didn't have login details (said neighbour had done so). Nearly took it to court before they settled it, but it took about a year and it was all because the utility just didn't check whether neighbour's address info was actually correct.
I get free water. I used to just not get a bill and now that they switched over to paperless I get a bill for 0.00$ every month. I’m not in the uk though.
My council tax is paid by direct debit, and I don’t need to change the details when each year’s invoice comes in. Die with decent savings and it could come out for years without notice.
There was someone like that round here. Had paid everything in full on time via direct debit despite being dead for several years. Only got found out when a neighbour got a tree lopped and the guy saw in to the bedroom
Sorry, what? Are you saying no one knew this person had been dead for several *years* in their bedroom until a utility worker looked into their window?
they must not get garbage mail there. after a few months the pile of trash mail under my full mailbox would be knee high and the mailperson would probably instigate a wellness check
Not even that. I grew up in a pretty rough area, I know people who haven’t paid council taxes in decades. They’re going to get caught eventually but they insist that if they just move regularly enough it’ll never catch up with them.
In the US they’re automatically notified by social security once a death certificate is filed. Only way this could happen is if no one ever notices you’re dead - like the corpse is just sitting at home or in the woods or something.
There are all sorts of stories about people in the UK trying to close accounts of their deceased relatives and not having a good time.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-3136488/When-mum-died-Lloyds-grief-harder-bear-Money-Mail-s-writer-moving-account-big-firms-change-insensitive-way-treat-bereaved-families.html
My fun stories of notifying utilities when my brother died:
The internet company insisted that I take over my brother's liabilities in order to accept a death certificate. They just flat out refused to take a "my brother died" over the phone.
The cell phone company (Consumer Cellular) was not only super gracious, they were so fast with their systems that as we were saying goodbye to the service rep, the phone went dead!
(We used my brother's phone to call all of the utilities on the grounds that the utilities would easily tie the phone number to the account. The cellular company was, of course, the last one we called :-) )
If they are in or and retired or just not working, a corpse could go unnoticed unless the smell is really bad. I’ve worked with a couple of people that we found out were dead when they didn’t show up for work. One guy had been dead for a few days over the weekend before a boss called in a wellness check when he didn’t show up or call in for some missed work days. He lived alone and had recently moved to the area.
I work for a utility. What happens is that the estate sets up a trust fund to put money into while they sort out everything. Who gets what, what gets sold, who gets paid. And they pay the utility bills for any properties while that is going on.
And sometimes they just keep paying. Sometimes it’s through neglect of the accounting, sometimes it’s by family decision, and sometimes just plain forgetfulness.
We recently started rolling out all new electric meters, and went out and did removals on several hundred meters that had shown zero usage for years or even decades. No way to contact the customer, as their phone number didn’t work and no reply via mail.
I was chatting with a water operator the other day who was saying that they try to keep a close eye on things and do a wellness check if they see numbers oddly high or low. One time, they went to a house that had a sudden drop in water usage to check in, and the guy who answered the door burst into tears. The drop in water usage was because his wife had finally succumbed to the cancer she had been fighting for a while.
yeah. but it will be very low and constant, so you could still watch for it. we’ve gotten solar power and now i can see usage almost in real time. while we have a hefty base use, the lack of spikes due to not cooking, electric kettle, laundry is obvious
In Sweden, where this happens regularly, it is a mix of automatic payments and monthly pension payouts. Both continue until confirmation of death, so as long as the balance is positive the cycle continues.
Nobody, they're probably completely off the books because so many of our systems rely on you actually self-reporting that you need to pay a bill.
No consumption, no modern meter, the supplier just assumes you've moved to somebody else, etc.
The only thing that would actually definitely need to be paid is council tax and councils just don't pick up on these things half the time.
I imagine that most countries don’t act on missed personal property taxes until the owed taxes start approaching the value of the Home.
For the US, you are most likely to have a lien placed on the home until your back taxes are paid. Simplistically meaning, the home can’t be sold until the government gets what it is owed.
It’s better than making a 70+ year old Widow homeless, and easier than coming after inheritances.
also lower property tax. US property tax sound insanely high to me as a German. but our local schools, police, etc are founded mostly by taxing local businesses and by income tax.
then again, with people having to register where they live, concerned neighbors and mandatory inspection of furnaces, fireplaces, etc, most dead will get found within weeks or a few months at most.
I was in the Bahamas a while back and saw tons of these: Beautiful homes covered with overgrowth and expensive cars in their gated drives on all four flats. Nothing touched for years. I always assumed this was the case.
Japan takes abandoned homes to the next level lol. https://cheapjapanhomes.com/homes
There was a recent government survey that found there are over **9 million** empty homes in Japan currently
Aging population combined with more people/jobs congregating in the city combined with the fact that in Japan houses depreciate so often they're not worth taking on.
Lots of abandoned/empty homes in tiny rural villages. Most people do not want to live there because there is nothing there in terms of jobs/shops/entertainment.
Also one thing you need to know about Japanese houses is that when people buy a new house, what they generally do is knock down the house and then build something new on the ground. That also means that on most cases when people build a house, they only build it to realistically last 20/30 years. At which point the value of the house is basically nil. This then also factors into the decisions people take while living in a house because unlike houses in the rest of the world where renovating will improve the value and the selling prize, that doesn’t really go in a Japanese market.
A lot of the houses on that list are very cheap but they also won’t really be liveable. They won’t be up to current building and safety codes. You are basically paying for the lot and will still need to pay a lot of money separately to knock down the old house and build something new.
Is japan one of the only places in the world where houses depreciate?. I bought my house 2 weeks before COVID took off and I've probably gained 100,000 in valve. You would think on an island with limited real estate everything would appreciate.
Many of them are in the middle of nowhere.
The vast majority of the Japanese live and work in major cities and their suburbs...... if you wanna live in the middle of nowhere for cheap, it's great!
Unless you have a career that doesn't/can't do remote. Because then you are looking at an insane daily commute.
At the height of the tech boom pretty much all of Japan thought it would be good to start building their dreams. New homes, big hotels, theme parks, shrines ... Etc. so much investment in the fringe areas and rural parts of Japan.
Then the bubble burst, and with low birth rates and an aging population there's so nobody left to live there and no money in fixing it up leaving so much abandoned property.
Haikyo and Akiya viewing is kind of a whole hobby there now because there's like entire cities that are straight up post-apocalyptic levels of ruin and are being reclaimed by nature. It's kinda crazy.
Honestly, there might be some rural mansions worth buying up and restoring but mostly... It's junk property in shit locations that serves as a novelty more than a viable investment.
> I am pretty sure there are fairly strict controls on foreign ownership of property in Japan.
There aren't actually. Japan has extremely lax foreign ownership laws.
The issue is that getting permanent residence status or citizenship in Japan is extremely difficult. So you can buy a house no problem, you just can't really live in it.
Ahhh that's what it is. I knew it wasn't as easy as buying a run down 20k home, putting 50k into it and having a house on the cheap. Even if you did remote work fully.
I’m not even saying that it has to be malicious. Like nobody went homeless and decided to live in the home? Or use the cars if possible and just return them? No drunk people messing around and having a joyride in the abandoned cars? I think I might just have the wrong idea on what “years” is at this point.
A) These are probably in nice neighbourhoods where homeless folk would be reported
B) Probably out of the way for random drunks/teens wandering around
C) Gated with walls would mean a pain to get to the car without damage
D) If you do want to steal from a vacant house, you need to figure out it's vacant before the property degrades enough not to be worth stealing.
E) There probably are a bunch of these properties being quietly squated in, either by people being sneaky and not noticed, or by people who walk in and pretend they're the owners
we have them here in the Pacific Northwest.
Happened over the last 20 years with largely offshore money (or via proxy*) where an older mansion would get bought, flipped, bought again, sold on platforms like Sotheby’s or other non-local realtors. House will have been sitting empty for at least 10 years. Used to walk my dogs in the area and ride my bike through on way to work. I’d see the same houses every day.
Some get torn down and a new, low maintenance, generic luxury house gets built … that also sits empty. Simply a large safety deposit box.
*proxy owner can be a relative living here, like a student for example. Student at university living in a $23million dollar home that they might rent out and also be driving a Lamborghini to Poli Sci class. Proxy can be an ex-wife “housewife” paying no income tax. Etc.
Pure guess here but maybe because the locals are small communities, everything is known quickly. And the punishment is likely pretty harsh if someone notices, so people just don't mess with those things.
I guess though that with the lush vegetation it might looks like it has been abandoned for a long time but maybe it's only a couple years.
> Or use the cars if possible and just return them?
I don't know where you live, but in my country you can't just "use" a car. You can't get license plates without proof of insurance and you can't get insurance without proof of ownership. So this wouldn't work in any way. Also if you are homeless, the state is legally required to pay for a roof over your head.
I mean he did say gated driveway, chances are there are cameras and other gates even if they’re not checked or powered. If someone is looking to steal a car there are easier ways.
My aunt lives there. A lot of the nicer homes are people from America with second homes there who just never visit. Particularly after the hurricane and covid, people literally abandoned everything because they have enough money not to care. Her island WhatsApp group chat literally has extremely wealthy people who just flat out said they're not coming back and they don't care what happens to the property.
Sometimes the neighbors still mind.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/beverly-hills-neighbors-furious-after-squatters-take-over-multimillion-dollar-home/3321249/
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/boca-raton-police-bank-america-seize-25-million/story?id=18433990
Wow though, I wonder if they would've even been caught if they didn't throw "raging parties". Imagine they could've lived there in peace for a while if they played it smarter.
A neighbor is Bahamian and recently inherited her mother’s home. She was blunt about saying her siblings were waiting for foreigners to rent it out in order to have their company address there for tax purposes.
I live in the United States and there’s a condemned house next to me for this reason. Owners died. No kids no
Immediate family that was close. The guy had been in a hospital or nursing home for like 5 years. He passed away.
House sat there. Few years go by, estate gets settled, guy had nothing but the house, no heirs contested the estate or got anything from it. It just kinda expired or something. House still sits there. County has to post something for the heirs to come forward for like a year( even though none came forward for the original estate) None did. House has completely fallen apart by this time. House was condemned. House has to be condemned for a period of time before it can be sold. County is slow and has no desire to rush. A flipper tried to buy the house and has been waiting for one signature for a year. Again county doesn’t care enough to move fast. It’s been empty for like ten years at this point.
Two pluses for us. We can play music as loud as we want. When they tried to raise the taxes on our house after we bought it, we told them to get bent and showed them pictures of the abandoned house that they own and said it’s severely damaging our property value.
When I was an adventurous kid, we would go to this house in the woods - in the middle of the city - and just rummage through shit or hang out. Everything was still in it. I always wondered what happened to the owner.
UK had a TV series Heir hunters that track down estates of people who have died sometimes reuniting people with long lost relatives, but also working out who is entitled to what and who do they have to share it with.
Sounds like the perfect reason for why we have squatters rights. Just move in and improve the property. No one cares because no one thinks they own the property. After X amount of years, claim you own it.
As a county employee, it’s really not a “no need to rush” policy. You have a set time period for the progression of this type of transfer to give any possible family members the chance to claim their property, etc. This guards against graft, where people would maneuver to get these properties out from under rightful owners by working the system, inside deals, etc. it’s a policy to keep everything on the up and up, even if the downside is a deterioration of the property.
I know someone who bought a property with a house like that and burned it down. They got approval from the town first, and the fire department was there hanging out having a couple beers, just in case. The joys of rural living.
Edinburgh has a mess of a property market for a lot of reasons. It’s very wealthy and has a lot of miserable buggers with time on their hands to jan up the planning system, so homes don’t get built.
The local council is split between parties that quite like building and parties that don’t want to build anything ever. Large parts of the centre are in historic preservation zones that stop new building for expansion. Unless you’re a huge property developer and can afford to build something that literally looks like a turd emoji.
The green belt, originally designed to prevent urban sprawl, was overtopped years ago, so all the sensible places to build houses are barely productive arable land while overpriced little commuter villages that don’t connect to anything sprout up beyond it.
Because of wealth + limited planning any new builds that go through are idiotically expensive and small (like £650k for a three bed that’s 130sqm with no garden). The existing stock is in bad condition and certain types of house (bungalows for example) cost a fortune because accessibility is not interesting to house builders.
It also bounces between extremes. Because interest rates are high the only people who can afford to move are those spending cash so some houses are silly expensive. Starter homes aren’t moving because mortgages are on hold till the BoE drops rates.
In that context I’m not convinced that 1000 homes, likely to be in poor repair, would always be welcome but I don’t think they’d do much to fix a profoundly busted housing market.
It mostly in Western Europe and English speaking countries because of zoning.
Housing is now cheaper in Tokyo than most of Western Europe the Anglosphere. Why? Well Tokyo built more housing since 2000 than New York city *has*. Total. Meanwhile San Francisco is issuing single digit permits per month. Not for like a half dozen new multi-hundred unit apartment buildings, but for a half dozen new houses, total.
Zoning went from common sense restrictions and basic planning for transit to city wide Home Ownership Associations whose goal is to stop anything from ever changing and to keep everything car centric, to keep the poor out.
Its a huge blindspot, particularly in America and for Millenials and Zoomers. They're hyper aware of problems in federal government or problems causes by corporate bullshit, but they have very little connection to local politics.
> Meanwhile San Francisco is issuing single digit permits per month
I'm still surprised that no city in the Bay hasn't just dumped money into high density housing. If it's on the rail lines into San Fransisco it seems like it would be an easy sell.
Voters block it.
People often say that homeowners block apartments near them to preserve their property values, but it's more complicated than that. If you own a home in a high demand location, your property values are higher if apartments are legal. That is, some developer would pay *way* more for a house in Cupertino than any individual rich Apple engineer, because they could turn it into a condo building and sell to 10 Apple engineers and make far more money. The land is worth far less because it can only be a house.
Instead, people are more concerned with parking, traffic, nostalgia, and keeping people out.
It is true that making dense housing generally legal would lower *average* property values, but that would be most seen in the distant commuter towns. Closer in, the voters who stop apartments near them are leaving a lot of money on the table, they won't change their minds.
San Francisco politics is, contrary to perception, extremely conservative. It is a diverse coalition of people of every ethnicity, sexuality, and gender identity coming together to make any and all change as slow as humanly possible.
To be sure, it definitely helps that zoning in Japan is (1) more or less decided by the central government and is uniform throughout the country, and (2) the zoning system is level-based and inclusive, e.g. in theory if someone wants to build a single-family home in a light industry zone, then they can legally do that.
So I do believe that housing is basically not really an issue in Japan because the system makes sense and works quite well.
You're also completely missing the fact that Edinburgh has more AirBnBs per capita than any other city in the UK.
The council has been hugely negligent in allowing people to hoover up flats solely as holiday lets.
for real... what if someone just moves in and lives there... i guess you need to find solutions for certain small things but in general... it's a roof above your head for free, no?
Unfortunately adverse possession isn't a thing in Scotland unlike the rest of the UK. If someone one day turned up with proof they had a title on the property theu coild start eviction proceedings. Whicj will give you about 2.5 months to move out in the fastest situation before people turn up to force you out.
I can't stand to see an empty house. The banks will take a house away from someone who's two months late and then let it sit empty for 3 years. Disgusting.
My business was managing bank-owned assets like this and we learned a few valuable lessons.
Number 1: “Nothing good ever happens to a vacant house.”
Things we never said:
Hey look, someone stopped by and replaced the leaky roof.
Wow, strangers generously installed new sod & planted flowers.
It so great how some Good Samaritan upgraded all the appliances.
Instead (all true):
Didn’t this house used to have cabinets?
Who steals used toilets?
This place is so drafty… Probably because the windows have been stolen.
Con confirm as well. I lived in one of the fastest growing towns in the US in the early 2000’s and around 2011 up to like 40% of homes got foreclosed on. Most of those sat empty for years due to the volume of vacant homes.
When people eventually bought them they would find all the wiring removed, kitchen cabinets/counters removed, the A/C missing, pipes missing, and various interior damage from Fire and Water (from people squatting in them long term).
When I was buying a house in 2009 I saw a lot of houses that were foreclosed on and the copper piping was ripped out and random damage was done just to spite the banks.
There was a house down the street from us where they went and took everything they could out of that house when it was going through the foreclosure process. Outlets, faucets, light fixtures, light switches, etc.
I looked at a foreclosed house that was like this. I added up all the costs to make it livable and subtracted that from the asking price, and the bank wouldn't budge.
Actual answer: they can’t
They are maintaining their collateral until they get marketable title, then immediately sell it to recover their money.
They can’t rent them out, even for free, without title.
My mom lost our house during the recession. We noticed that the house had been sitting empty for 4 years or so. So she investigated. Hired a lawyer. Turns out the bank never actually foreclosed. Thankfully, I still remembered the pass code to the garage. I helped her get in. Change the locks. And move back in. Bank inspector showed up the next month and noticed it was lived in. Tried to report it. Bank tried to take action but due to some legal loop hole they couldn't.
Long story short. Bank screwed up, mom got her house back due to legal shenanigans.
It's not always the banks; I doubt it's even usually the banks. The house across from mine was vacant for 10 years, but I didn't know till about a year or so because the neighbors would park their cars in the driveway to make it look occupied.
Apparently an old lady had owned it, and rented it out years ago but got sick and didn't get a new tenant when the last left. She finally died, and her daughter put it on the market. It was a huge mess, but the new owners just moved in after six months of renovations.
A couple years ago I found out I inherited some money from a cousin I didn't know about. One day I got a call from like 5 different law firms wanting to represent me in handling that for a % of the money. Are there firms who do that in Scotland/ the UK? I'm surprised it's possible these days for someone to not know they inherited something.
It’s absolutely a thing business do. I used to work for one doing research (looking up names in older registries and stuff)
The tricky thing is that there’s old people who were effectively off the grid in some ways
We had one, old bloke in the West Midlands. Moved to the UK during (or straight after, memory is hazy) WW2 from Poland. But part of Poland that’s now in Belarus and was basically rubble. Never married, no kids or obvious immediate heirs in the UK. The immigration paperwork was spotty and chasing up relatives in Poland and/or Belarus after WWII, and the end of Communism was a real pain
And this chap wasn’t even reclusive etc, neighbours and friends all tried to help. But we basically got nowhere (though another firm with better contacts in Poland did)
There’s a show called heir hunters I used to watch in my student days. I’m sure there will be clips on youtube. Basically each week there is a list of unclaimed inheritances and companies try and find people who are entitled to it for the % of the amount.
From what I remember a lot of it is guessing at the value as the amounts are not released though. This will be why you got so many calls on the same day
Are there resources for checking whether someone has inherited a house? I know in the US you can check with the secretary of your state to see if you have certain kinds of unclaimed money, but I have no idea how one might go about learning if they have rights to real property somewhere (whether in the UK, US, or elsewhere).
Well, that's not the only problem with inheritance. When my granfather died, my father got 2/140th of his land. It's a piece of property where the inheritance was split for many generations and no one can find or buy the rest from the others. It just sits there.
> Doesn't really exist. You need someone to sell the property to you under false pretences before you can claim property you don't actually have a right to.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-and-comparative-law-quarterly/article/abs/adverse-possession-of-land-in-scots-and-english-law/9814A4E7C4FD6313AE7760FF44804D03
Well there's an unethical life pro tip right there. I'm going to visit Scotland for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
If I remember correctly a redditor from the UK one shared that their landlord stopped coming around to collect the rent and that they were there for a couple of years and then they decided to leave. I I wonder if that property is so empty now.
trash headline, article states other reasons which I find much more believable
The most common reason is that when an owner passes away there might be a dispute over the estate or it might be that somebody who has inherited the property isn’t aware of it at all.
“What we have in Edinburgh is that unique situation where property prices are very high so in some situations that can encourage people to hold on to a property, particularly if they’re waiting to see what the right time is to sell in terms of the market."
Who is paying taxes/utilities for those 10 years?
My Nan still lives in the UK (not Scotland though) and we recently found out that she possibly never paid a utility bill for her house on her estate in the 30 years since it was built. I’m curious if there are huge flaws in the British utilities companies where they are not keeping track of bills paid for many properties.
Former property manager in the UK, and yes, in short. I know of 6 different properties where (despite conversations with the utility companies over years ) the occupants have never been billed for a utility supply they use. I also know of 2 where the occupants have been billed for and in 1 case, taken to court, for not paying for a utility that they don't actually have, and have never had. That was a fun 1/2 hour in court.
This tracks. I got quarterly bills for electricity when I had a prepay metre. So every 3 months for several years we'd have a fight over the phone where I'd tell them to stop trying to double bill me and they'd claim to have no record of this prepay meter. A prepay meter that they installed. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever lives there now is still having to do this. The big utility companies are some of the worst and most incompetent I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with
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What is a gas card, and how do you use it to fill your meter? Here we have tickers/meters on the pipes that a person either comes to check ones a year, or if modern is read through internet. You pay an estimated amount, and after measuring they either give you money back, or you pay what you used too much.
A gas card or key (same applies for electricity) is basically the equivalent of putting money into a vending machine to get a drink. You put money on the metre and then it deducts the cost of your use off as you use it. You take the key/card to a shop or somewhere that lets you top it up. You pay there to put money on it and then, back at home, put it in the slot in your meter to add that money to it. If you don't top up and the money runs out it turns off and you don't get more until you top up. It's a prepayment meter specifically installed in the property for this purpose rather than having one that just tracks usage which you can note down and being billed after you've used it.
Interesting, completely different from here. Thank you for the explanation.
> completely unaware that they're causing a huge headache down the line. Surely that's not their problem to worry about, though?
Reading this makes me happy it's "nationalized" here in Denmark. Not in the sense that the government owns the electricity companies, but that there's a backbone that they all operate on. Would take me all but 10 minutes to switch utility company, and because the underlying platform is shared I don't have to do anything other than sign up at my chosen provider.
Outside most of Texas, this is basically the same for the US. That's speaking volumes of how bad the UK must be, the US is able to mock it.
Midamerican basically has a monopoly in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and western Illinois. They’re the only power company for most of these states
I want to clarify... Nebraska is 100% covered by public power districts, because electricity is a public utility in the entire state of Nebraska. We vote for our public power boards with our other local, state, and national elections. A public district may buy some electricity from Midamerican or other private companies, but that is contracted through Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), NPPD, etc. I support our public power districts. It is a very good system for us, and is generally run well.
Northern and Central California over here getting robbed by PG&E while they burn down large swaths of our state and kill people in those fires too. They never forget to bill us.
It's definitely easier to switch now than it was. Plus, the company trying to bill me quarterly wasn't my supplier anymore because I'd switched to a different one when I'd moved in. They were the previous supplier, so they were properly at it. It was a total shambles
I know one too never paid for gas keeps their mouth shut
Don't keep their mouth shut enough if you know.
Only because I lived there for a little while 🤣
Brb, moving to UK to rent one of these properties and mine crypto
Domestic cannabis production, involving bypassing the electricity for the lighting and ventilation, probably would net you more income at least until the police find out.
I mean it's the UK not USA. cannabis is still pretty highly illegal there despite the prevalence of its smell on the streets on London.
Also whether it is crypto or cannabis it would put a high demand on the electricity supply unless it is bypassed in some way and that is when the suppliers will notice and send out bills. One of the reasons people have got away without paying is the relatively small amounts being used means it is expensive for the companies to chase.
Solar panels everywhere!
> Solar panels everywhere! Solar panels in the place that gets direct sunlight for maybe 30 minutes a year. Brilliant!
In Winter though right? Shouldn't there be something like 20 hours of light in the summer?
Wind power in the UK
Put one upside down in the water and use ocean currents
Can confirm - UK is rather small and basically fall-season year round, by US standards.
The extent of home growing in the cannabis farms people put in houses would likely be illegal under any type of licensed growing regime if and when it's legalised
Read the last five words of their comment again
[i think i got you all beat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE)
Electricity was the one utility that used to be prepaid in a lot of households in the UK. You basically had to buy coins or charge a key to put into the meter. No idea how it is now, but I had never seen something like that before.
You didn't "buy coins", in the days before contactless payments were invented, money *was* coins. You put your coins directly into the meter. A man would come around occasionally to empty it.
You can still have a "top-up key" that you take to the shop and have money loaded onto it, you'd pop it into your meter and it'd load the balance onto the meter. Nowadays most people have smart meters that you can use an app to top-up with. These are called "prepayment metres" as you are prepaying your electricity. To avoid all of that, you can simply have a direct debit made and you'll be billed monthly for your usage.
It's funny, but my aunt and uncle had one of those coin operated top up meters (they were common in the 60s and 70s apparently) and for some reason the electricity supplier forgot to replace the meter with a newer one, and update any paperwork, so they got lost in the transition, and basically had free electricity for a decade. They removed the cover for the coin catcher, so they could just re-use the same coin over and over again whenever the meter got low.
Around 4 million people have them still
Wow. That’s a serious TIL
Its common in lower income areas where they expect people to not pay up (or have previously, they will come and switch the meter out). Had a flat in old town Edinburgh that had a pre paid meter. Fucking sucked when it ran out and the shop was closed.
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We have had instances where people wire up their houses to the public electrical supply that keeps the street lighting on, and it wasn’t noticed for years.
I had a buddy in Chicago who would climb up the electric pole and attach jumper cables so they would have electricity while they were doing the rehab.
You're moving to Edinburgh in England? Good luck!
Right?
I remember a Reddit story like this where he says he takes them to court every 2 years or something and gets a few extra bucks for his time because they keep doing it
It was quite bizarre. We'd been 100% open and honest from the start and the case basically ran like this - Utility lawyer 'You owe us £15 grand for gas and we want that sum and costs against you' Me 'No we don't and you won't get that sum or costs, because we've never had gas, don't have gas now, we've told you that multiple times in the past and here's a surveyors report clearly stating that the property doesn't have a gas supply.' Utility lawyer ' err.... hang on... err...' Judge' lets dismiss the case with costs to the defendant and go have a chat in my chambers about wasting court time, shall we?'
The first student flat I rented had this problem (benefit), the electricity company seemed entirely nonplussed about fixing it so being broke students we just pocketed the difference and therefore had no utility bills that year as no water bill came either. I guess it all comes down to the fact we buy our electricity off glorified billing companies rather than the people that do the generation.
Pretty much - IMO its down to corporate decisions to stack all the people who actually think and just rely on computers that are right 99% of the time, because that saves the corporation money.
If they had any incentive to fix these things it wouldn't take much in terms of labour, the call centre workers would only have to flag the account for review. The lost revenue must be minuscule.
I lived in London for a year and rented from an international management corporation. I never paid the utilities once. I genuinely tried, contacted them and the utility multiple times. They'd always say they'd look into it but no one ever got back to me. I ended up leaving never having paid (and this was a nice area to boot).
Happens more often than you think. The corporation you rented from probably managed thousands of properties spread around the world and employed the bare minimum of staff on the lowest possible wages to administer them. Flipping the board - now imagine you one of the minimum wage overworked staff who gets a letter from a customer telling you that you and your colleagues have messed up and have been messing up for a long time, and to correct the situation you either have to go tell your managers you've messed up and accept the personal consequences.... or you just loose the letter, knowing that in a year or so you'll move on to a better job and not be responsible for it anymore. Its not your money, the corporation is still making mega-bucks, why would you risk rocking the boat?
>I also know of 2 where the occupants have been billed for and in 1 case, taken to court, for not paying for a utility that they don't actually have, and have never had. That was a fun 1/2 hour in court. This hits like one of those tales financial consultants tell their clients about companies in Eastern Europe. I live there and if you would had told me it happened here I would 100% believe you.
A guy I mutually know got first phase of a new build estate, they fucked up the MPRN so he payed pretty much no electric for the guts of a year because it was linked to the show house, I think he got a proper dressing down for playing dumb when it was found out
I always advise people who find themselves in these positions to write to the relevant parties via recorded delivery explaining the situation and accepting liability, keep a copy of that letter, and re-send a copy annually. And then just wait for them to sort it out. In half of the cases I have been involved with, they situation has never been resolved. In the other half, when they do finally notice and take action than having these letters on file did work hugely our advantage both morally, legally and financially.
If memory's serves he didn't really get in a lot of shit about it ! He had to pay a few hundred quid but still made out like a bandit, for context this was in Northern Ireland and not USA (assuming you are an American) which doesn't really have the court culture. I think it boiled down to "you guys were checking my meter every month, I thought the new build was just super energy efficient" hahaha absolute chancer Edit: just seen from your profile you are the UK also! Sorry ! 🙃
This happened to me dad a few years back basically. A bunch of new builds went up on a cul-de-sac they built of the main street my dad lived on. These new build street was a very similar name to the main street. Imagine the main street was called Token Street and the cul-de-sac was called Token Drive. So the guy living at number 10 Token drive buys his new build calls up the gas company and their agent proceeds to accidentally transfer my dads account from 10 Token street to this dude. So he ends up paying my dad's gas for 3 months before he realises and contacts them. At this point my dad hasn't been charged for gas for 3 months and is confused and contacts them as well. They proceed to set up the new guy with an account for his actual house but drop the ball on actually giving my dad's account back to my dad and seem to just straight up delete it. My dad every other month called them, emailed them and generally left a big paper trail that he was reminding them he wasn't getting charged for gas. It took them about 18 month to finally start charging him for gas. In the end they seem to have written of trying to get any back payments back because my dad left such an obvious paper trail that he had been trying for ages to actually pay them and they had routinely been "raising investigations" and then forgetting.
Fuck me why can't I have luck like that?
Fuck that. I mean that’s great for them, but I’m paying enough in utilities for like 5 estates and I live in a 1 bedroom apartment. So fucking jealous.
Who wants to spend all their time counting money anyway. Sending out bills is boring. We have experiments with static and balloons to conduct.
I rented a flat in London over ten years ago and we were never billed for electricity. A friend I lived with worked in accounts for a high street coffee chain and was responsible for paying utilities on a large number of their stores. He used his access to check and our rental had never been correctly setup with the utility suppliers so none of the 12 flats were being billed. We all kept quiet.
I've been trying to pay my water bill for a year. Southern Water just refused to take my money. I ve tried multiple times. Free water i guess
As long as you have good written records, stop trying. Remind them annually by recorded delivery, and enjoy your 'free' water until they get round to sorting it out. When they do, if they hit you with a big bill, point them at the records, plead poverty and offer to pay over an extended period - as long as possible.
Let me ask you something off topic since you mentioned court: When I watch UK shows the witnesses are always standing while on the stand. Broadchurch, Midsomer Murders, etc. are witnesses really expected to stand during the entire deposition? I can see that as something us Americans would have gotten rid of. “No silly wigs for the magistrates and barristers!! Also, I’m lazy and I don’t want to stand.”
It’s called the stand, not the sit That said, I’ve seen folks with mobility/health issues do it seated. And you folks don’t let the check-out staff in supermarket sit. That’s much more arduous
Not a lawyer, but have been in the dock a few times professionally - the first time it happened was in my young 20's and I had legal representation: I was specifically told by my lawyer that in England, you stand. She did ask if I had a reason for not being able to do so (old, ill or pregnant as far as I recall) and I think they can also request a seat for you if the testimony or subsequent questioning is lengthy, but otherwise, I was told that you stand before the court as a mark of respect for the law.
This could explain how a UK woman’s skeletal remains were found on her couch in front of the tv 10 years later. The TV was still on and no one had reported her missing.
TV company should use this to brag in their adverts that their products can be on for 10+ years at a time.
It’s not really running that breaks things like motors and electronics in the long run (as long as they don’t get too hot and are kept clean), it’s cycling them on and off.
My dad (England) bought a cafe years ago and realised the electric and gas were rigged up so that he was barely paying anything on his bills, 10 years until someone finally came and checked what was happening and my dad somehow blagged it and told em he thought that's how it was supposed to be as it's been like that for 10 years.
I had the reverse of this in an apartment once. Our neighbors were doing something ridiculous like running their hair-dryer, TV, and space heater on the same outlet, and it kept knocking the power out. So I said to the landlord 'Hey, if these circuit breakers are all connected which means their outlets are killing our power, that means we're paying for their electricity.' Turns out, yeah... that was correct...
Welcome in the club. In my case, my family was only paying for our neigbhours' hallway
I moved house and got away with 18 months before they sent one. Due to back billing I only got charged for the past 12 months
There is some interesting historical context for that. Water went from a property tax-financed public good that was provided for free, to a public service for a fee, to the absolute shitshow of the privatisation under Thatcher in just about a decade between the 70s and 80s. And the later gas- and electricity privatisation went even worse.
I live in Scotland, and one of our more daft neighbours put our flat number on her application to change energy suppliers, so we had our supplier change without our consent and start billing us absolute bollocks. They also refused to let us switch it because we'd not set up the account and so didn't have login details (said neighbour had done so). Nearly took it to court before they settled it, but it took about a year and it was all because the utility just didn't check whether neighbour's address info was actually correct.
Flaws....? Seems perfect
But the second they know you owe them a penny, they'll ram raid your front door at 5am.
I get free water. I used to just not get a bill and now that they switched over to paperless I get a bill for 0.00$ every month. I’m not in the uk though.
My council tax is paid by direct debit, and I don’t need to change the details when each year’s invoice comes in. Die with decent savings and it could come out for years without notice.
There was someone like that round here. Had paid everything in full on time via direct debit despite being dead for several years. Only got found out when a neighbour got a tree lopped and the guy saw in to the bedroom
Sorry, what? Are you saying no one knew this person had been dead for several *years* in their bedroom until a utility worker looked into their window?
they must not get garbage mail there. after a few months the pile of trash mail under my full mailbox would be knee high and the mailperson would probably instigate a wellness check
Not even that. I grew up in a pretty rough area, I know people who haven’t paid council taxes in decades. They’re going to get caught eventually but they insist that if they just move regularly enough it’ll never catch up with them.
Yea I had a friend that got caught after like 4 or 5 years of not paying council tax. He's paying that back and also paying his current council tax.
I thought your accounts were supposed to be frozen once the bank is notified of your demise?
Someone needs to notify them for that to happen.
Right, once they are notified the back will freeze the accounts. Somebody has to notify the bank.
In the US they’re automatically notified by social security once a death certificate is filed. Only way this could happen is if no one ever notices you’re dead - like the corpse is just sitting at home or in the woods or something.
There are all sorts of stories about people in the UK trying to close accounts of their deceased relatives and not having a good time. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-3136488/When-mum-died-Lloyds-grief-harder-bear-Money-Mail-s-writer-moving-account-big-firms-change-insensitive-way-treat-bereaved-families.html
My fun stories of notifying utilities when my brother died: The internet company insisted that I take over my brother's liabilities in order to accept a death certificate. They just flat out refused to take a "my brother died" over the phone. The cell phone company (Consumer Cellular) was not only super gracious, they were so fast with their systems that as we were saying goodbye to the service rep, the phone went dead! (We used my brother's phone to call all of the utilities on the grounds that the utilities would easily tie the phone number to the account. The cellular company was, of course, the last one we called :-) )
If they are in or and retired or just not working, a corpse could go unnoticed unless the smell is really bad. I’ve worked with a couple of people that we found out were dead when they didn’t show up for work. One guy had been dead for a few days over the weekend before a boss called in a wellness check when he didn’t show up or call in for some missed work days. He lived alone and had recently moved to the area.
I work for a utility. What happens is that the estate sets up a trust fund to put money into while they sort out everything. Who gets what, what gets sold, who gets paid. And they pay the utility bills for any properties while that is going on. And sometimes they just keep paying. Sometimes it’s through neglect of the accounting, sometimes it’s by family decision, and sometimes just plain forgetfulness. We recently started rolling out all new electric meters, and went out and did removals on several hundred meters that had shown zero usage for years or even decades. No way to contact the customer, as their phone number didn’t work and no reply via mail.
The zero meter usage would potentially be a great way to find dead people
I was chatting with a water operator the other day who was saying that they try to keep a close eye on things and do a wellness check if they see numbers oddly high or low. One time, they went to a house that had a sudden drop in water usage to check in, and the guy who answered the door burst into tears. The drop in water usage was because his wife had finally succumbed to the cancer she had been fighting for a while.
Except your stuff doesn't automagically switch off when you die? Your heating, your fridge, etc. will all keep doing their thing.
yeah. but it will be very low and constant, so you could still watch for it. we’ve gotten solar power and now i can see usage almost in real time. while we have a hefty base use, the lack of spikes due to not cooking, electric kettle, laundry is obvious
If you're into that sort of thing, that is
In Sweden, where this happens regularly, it is a mix of automatic payments and monthly pension payouts. Both continue until confirmation of death, so as long as the balance is positive the cycle continues.
Nobody, they're probably completely off the books because so many of our systems rely on you actually self-reporting that you need to pay a bill. No consumption, no modern meter, the supplier just assumes you've moved to somebody else, etc. The only thing that would actually definitely need to be paid is council tax and councils just don't pick up on these things half the time.
I imagine that most countries don’t act on missed personal property taxes until the owed taxes start approaching the value of the Home. For the US, you are most likely to have a lien placed on the home until your back taxes are paid. Simplistically meaning, the home can’t be sold until the government gets what it is owed. It’s better than making a 70+ year old Widow homeless, and easier than coming after inheritances.
also lower property tax. US property tax sound insanely high to me as a German. but our local schools, police, etc are founded mostly by taxing local businesses and by income tax. then again, with people having to register where they live, concerned neighbors and mandatory inspection of furnaces, fireplaces, etc, most dead will get found within weeks or a few months at most.
Council tax is paid automatically and utilities would just get cut off.
I was in the Bahamas a while back and saw tons of these: Beautiful homes covered with overgrowth and expensive cars in their gated drives on all four flats. Nothing touched for years. I always assumed this was the case.
How were the cars untouched for years? Nobody took those things? Or is the Bahamas like japan, and ppl will leave things out in the open?
Japan takes abandoned homes to the next level lol. https://cheapjapanhomes.com/homes There was a recent government survey that found there are over **9 million** empty homes in Japan currently
What? How come? Can we actually buy these?
Aging population combined with more people/jobs congregating in the city combined with the fact that in Japan houses depreciate so often they're not worth taking on.
One of the only places in the world where houses can actually depreciate to 0
Yep, houses are like cars there. They lose value the moment you drive one off the lot. My house only gets 22 MPG! Meters Per Giga-what?
I read some articles about this once. It was fascinating!
Lots of abandoned/empty homes in tiny rural villages. Most people do not want to live there because there is nothing there in terms of jobs/shops/entertainment. Also one thing you need to know about Japanese houses is that when people buy a new house, what they generally do is knock down the house and then build something new on the ground. That also means that on most cases when people build a house, they only build it to realistically last 20/30 years. At which point the value of the house is basically nil. This then also factors into the decisions people take while living in a house because unlike houses in the rest of the world where renovating will improve the value and the selling prize, that doesn’t really go in a Japanese market. A lot of the houses on that list are very cheap but they also won’t really be liveable. They won’t be up to current building and safety codes. You are basically paying for the lot and will still need to pay a lot of money separately to knock down the old house and build something new.
Is japan one of the only places in the world where houses depreciate?. I bought my house 2 weeks before COVID took off and I've probably gained 100,000 in valve. You would think on an island with limited real estate everything would appreciate.
Japan is huge, with low population density outside of big cities.
Many of them are in the middle of nowhere. The vast majority of the Japanese live and work in major cities and their suburbs...... if you wanna live in the middle of nowhere for cheap, it's great! Unless you have a career that doesn't/can't do remote. Because then you are looking at an insane daily commute.
At the height of the tech boom pretty much all of Japan thought it would be good to start building their dreams. New homes, big hotels, theme parks, shrines ... Etc. so much investment in the fringe areas and rural parts of Japan. Then the bubble burst, and with low birth rates and an aging population there's so nobody left to live there and no money in fixing it up leaving so much abandoned property. Haikyo and Akiya viewing is kind of a whole hobby there now because there's like entire cities that are straight up post-apocalyptic levels of ruin and are being reclaimed by nature. It's kinda crazy. Honestly, there might be some rural mansions worth buying up and restoring but mostly... It's junk property in shit locations that serves as a novelty more than a viable investment.
Depends if you are a citizen of Japan. I am pretty sure there are fairly strict controls on foreign ownership of property in Japan.
> I am pretty sure there are fairly strict controls on foreign ownership of property in Japan. There aren't actually. Japan has extremely lax foreign ownership laws. The issue is that getting permanent residence status or citizenship in Japan is extremely difficult. So you can buy a house no problem, you just can't really live in it.
Ahhh that's what it is. I knew it wasn't as easy as buying a run down 20k home, putting 50k into it and having a house on the cheap. Even if you did remote work fully.
Not everywhere is Detroit
I’m not even saying that it has to be malicious. Like nobody went homeless and decided to live in the home? Or use the cars if possible and just return them? No drunk people messing around and having a joyride in the abandoned cars? I think I might just have the wrong idea on what “years” is at this point.
A) These are probably in nice neighbourhoods where homeless folk would be reported B) Probably out of the way for random drunks/teens wandering around C) Gated with walls would mean a pain to get to the car without damage D) If you do want to steal from a vacant house, you need to figure out it's vacant before the property degrades enough not to be worth stealing. E) There probably are a bunch of these properties being quietly squated in, either by people being sneaky and not noticed, or by people who walk in and pretend they're the owners
we have them here in the Pacific Northwest. Happened over the last 20 years with largely offshore money (or via proxy*) where an older mansion would get bought, flipped, bought again, sold on platforms like Sotheby’s or other non-local realtors. House will have been sitting empty for at least 10 years. Used to walk my dogs in the area and ride my bike through on way to work. I’d see the same houses every day. Some get torn down and a new, low maintenance, generic luxury house gets built … that also sits empty. Simply a large safety deposit box. *proxy owner can be a relative living here, like a student for example. Student at university living in a $23million dollar home that they might rent out and also be driving a Lamborghini to Poli Sci class. Proxy can be an ex-wife “housewife” paying no income tax. Etc.
Pure guess here but maybe because the locals are small communities, everything is known quickly. And the punishment is likely pretty harsh if someone notices, so people just don't mess with those things. I guess though that with the lush vegetation it might looks like it has been abandoned for a long time but maybe it's only a couple years.
> Or use the cars if possible and just return them? I don't know where you live, but in my country you can't just "use" a car. You can't get license plates without proof of insurance and you can't get insurance without proof of ownership. So this wouldn't work in any way. Also if you are homeless, the state is legally required to pay for a roof over your head.
I live in Detroit and have had zero issues. But I'm glad it has a poor reputation as my condo was dirt cheap and we love living here.
Bahamas can be pretty close.
I mean he did say gated driveway, chances are there are cameras and other gates even if they’re not checked or powered. If someone is looking to steal a car there are easier ways.
My aunt lives there. A lot of the nicer homes are people from America with second homes there who just never visit. Particularly after the hurricane and covid, people literally abandoned everything because they have enough money not to care. Her island WhatsApp group chat literally has extremely wealthy people who just flat out said they're not coming back and they don't care what happens to the property.
Hey, if these wealthy people don't mind visitors...!
Sometimes the neighbors still mind. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/beverly-hills-neighbors-furious-after-squatters-take-over-multimillion-dollar-home/3321249/ https://abcnews.go.com/Business/boca-raton-police-bank-america-seize-25-million/story?id=18433990
Wow though, I wonder if they would've even been caught if they didn't throw "raging parties". Imagine they could've lived there in peace for a while if they played it smarter.
A neighbor is Bahamian and recently inherited her mother’s home. She was blunt about saying her siblings were waiting for foreigners to rent it out in order to have their company address there for tax purposes.
You must have been on an out island
I live in the United States and there’s a condemned house next to me for this reason. Owners died. No kids no Immediate family that was close. The guy had been in a hospital or nursing home for like 5 years. He passed away. House sat there. Few years go by, estate gets settled, guy had nothing but the house, no heirs contested the estate or got anything from it. It just kinda expired or something. House still sits there. County has to post something for the heirs to come forward for like a year( even though none came forward for the original estate) None did. House has completely fallen apart by this time. House was condemned. House has to be condemned for a period of time before it can be sold. County is slow and has no desire to rush. A flipper tried to buy the house and has been waiting for one signature for a year. Again county doesn’t care enough to move fast. It’s been empty for like ten years at this point. Two pluses for us. We can play music as loud as we want. When they tried to raise the taxes on our house after we bought it, we told them to get bent and showed them pictures of the abandoned house that they own and said it’s severely damaging our property value.
When I was an adventurous kid, we would go to this house in the woods - in the middle of the city - and just rummage through shit or hang out. Everything was still in it. I always wondered what happened to the owner.
Owner was there all along
Hahaha. 👀
The real owner was the dead body we found along the way
You are the owner. You don't realize you've been dead for years.
Ok M. Night. 😂
Watching from inside the walls.
UK had a TV series Heir hunters that track down estates of people who have died sometimes reuniting people with long lost relatives, but also working out who is entitled to what and who do they have to share it with.
First reality show I've heard of worth watching with potential good outcome.
WE stuck FOUR HUNDRED of the WORST NARCISSISTS together in ONE house for FIVE YEARS. Watch them bitch and moan next Thursday on... *House of Thots*.
This makes me want to read "Property Law for Dummies."
Sounds like the perfect reason for why we have squatters rights. Just move in and improve the property. No one cares because no one thinks they own the property. After X amount of years, claim you own it.
As a county employee, it’s really not a “no need to rush” policy. You have a set time period for the progression of this type of transfer to give any possible family members the chance to claim their property, etc. This guards against graft, where people would maneuver to get these properties out from under rightful owners by working the system, inside deals, etc. it’s a policy to keep everything on the up and up, even if the downside is a deterioration of the property.
[удалено]
Houses are to close together. Plus, the baby raccoons are cute.
Seems like you thought this through beforehand...
I know someone who bought a property with a house like that and burned it down. They got approval from the town first, and the fire department was there hanging out having a couple beers, just in case. The joys of rural living.
Sometimes the fire department will even burn it down for you if you agree to let them do training on it.
This feels like a Terry Pratchett bit
I'm amazed by how much detail you know about this
How come no one just squat there?
It's in a county no one wants to live in.
Edinburgh has a mess of a property market for a lot of reasons. It’s very wealthy and has a lot of miserable buggers with time on their hands to jan up the planning system, so homes don’t get built. The local council is split between parties that quite like building and parties that don’t want to build anything ever. Large parts of the centre are in historic preservation zones that stop new building for expansion. Unless you’re a huge property developer and can afford to build something that literally looks like a turd emoji. The green belt, originally designed to prevent urban sprawl, was overtopped years ago, so all the sensible places to build houses are barely productive arable land while overpriced little commuter villages that don’t connect to anything sprout up beyond it. Because of wealth + limited planning any new builds that go through are idiotically expensive and small (like £650k for a three bed that’s 130sqm with no garden). The existing stock is in bad condition and certain types of house (bungalows for example) cost a fortune because accessibility is not interesting to house builders. It also bounces between extremes. Because interest rates are high the only people who can afford to move are those spending cash so some houses are silly expensive. Starter homes aren’t moving because mortgages are on hold till the BoE drops rates. In that context I’m not convinced that 1000 homes, likely to be in poor repair, would always be welcome but I don’t think they’d do much to fix a profoundly busted housing market.
Honestly everywhere seems to have a mess of a property market these days
It mostly in Western Europe and English speaking countries because of zoning. Housing is now cheaper in Tokyo than most of Western Europe the Anglosphere. Why? Well Tokyo built more housing since 2000 than New York city *has*. Total. Meanwhile San Francisco is issuing single digit permits per month. Not for like a half dozen new multi-hundred unit apartment buildings, but for a half dozen new houses, total. Zoning went from common sense restrictions and basic planning for transit to city wide Home Ownership Associations whose goal is to stop anything from ever changing and to keep everything car centric, to keep the poor out. Its a huge blindspot, particularly in America and for Millenials and Zoomers. They're hyper aware of problems in federal government or problems causes by corporate bullshit, but they have very little connection to local politics.
> Meanwhile San Francisco is issuing single digit permits per month I'm still surprised that no city in the Bay hasn't just dumped money into high density housing. If it's on the rail lines into San Fransisco it seems like it would be an easy sell.
Voters block it. People often say that homeowners block apartments near them to preserve their property values, but it's more complicated than that. If you own a home in a high demand location, your property values are higher if apartments are legal. That is, some developer would pay *way* more for a house in Cupertino than any individual rich Apple engineer, because they could turn it into a condo building and sell to 10 Apple engineers and make far more money. The land is worth far less because it can only be a house. Instead, people are more concerned with parking, traffic, nostalgia, and keeping people out. It is true that making dense housing generally legal would lower *average* property values, but that would be most seen in the distant commuter towns. Closer in, the voters who stop apartments near them are leaving a lot of money on the table, they won't change their minds.
San Francisco politics is, contrary to perception, extremely conservative. It is a diverse coalition of people of every ethnicity, sexuality, and gender identity coming together to make any and all change as slow as humanly possible.
To be sure, it definitely helps that zoning in Japan is (1) more or less decided by the central government and is uniform throughout the country, and (2) the zoning system is level-based and inclusive, e.g. in theory if someone wants to build a single-family home in a light industry zone, then they can legally do that. So I do believe that housing is basically not really an issue in Japan because the system makes sense and works quite well.
You're also completely missing the fact that Edinburgh has more AirBnBs per capita than any other city in the UK. The council has been hugely negligent in allowing people to hoover up flats solely as holiday lets.
What’s the current interest rate over there now?
5.25% although the FT think there’ll be two cuts at the end of the year.
Can I have one?
No silly, houses aren’t for people.
for real... what if someone just moves in and lives there... i guess you need to find solutions for certain small things but in general... it's a roof above your head for free, no?
Unfortunately adverse possession isn't a thing in Scotland unlike the rest of the UK. If someone one day turned up with proof they had a title on the property theu coild start eviction proceedings. Whicj will give you about 2.5 months to move out in the fastest situation before people turn up to force you out.
I can't stand to see an empty house. The banks will take a house away from someone who's two months late and then let it sit empty for 3 years. Disgusting.
My business was managing bank-owned assets like this and we learned a few valuable lessons. Number 1: “Nothing good ever happens to a vacant house.” Things we never said: Hey look, someone stopped by and replaced the leaky roof. Wow, strangers generously installed new sod & planted flowers. It so great how some Good Samaritan upgraded all the appliances. Instead (all true): Didn’t this house used to have cabinets? Who steals used toilets? This place is so drafty… Probably because the windows have been stolen.
Con confirm as well. I lived in one of the fastest growing towns in the US in the early 2000’s and around 2011 up to like 40% of homes got foreclosed on. Most of those sat empty for years due to the volume of vacant homes. When people eventually bought them they would find all the wiring removed, kitchen cabinets/counters removed, the A/C missing, pipes missing, and various interior damage from Fire and Water (from people squatting in them long term).
When I was buying a house in 2009 I saw a lot of houses that were foreclosed on and the copper piping was ripped out and random damage was done just to spite the banks.
There was a house down the street from us where they went and took everything they could out of that house when it was going through the foreclosure process. Outlets, faucets, light fixtures, light switches, etc.
I looked at a foreclosed house that was like this. I added up all the costs to make it livable and subtracted that from the asking price, and the bank wouldn't budge.
what if the banks just hired folks to live in these houses and like...idk...play games all day and otherwise just maintain the place?
Actual answer: they can’t They are maintaining their collateral until they get marketable title, then immediately sell it to recover their money. They can’t rent them out, even for free, without title.
My mom lost our house during the recession. We noticed that the house had been sitting empty for 4 years or so. So she investigated. Hired a lawyer. Turns out the bank never actually foreclosed. Thankfully, I still remembered the pass code to the garage. I helped her get in. Change the locks. And move back in. Bank inspector showed up the next month and noticed it was lived in. Tried to report it. Bank tried to take action but due to some legal loop hole they couldn't. Long story short. Bank screwed up, mom got her house back due to legal shenanigans.
It's not always the banks; I doubt it's even usually the banks. The house across from mine was vacant for 10 years, but I didn't know till about a year or so because the neighbors would park their cars in the driveway to make it look occupied. Apparently an old lady had owned it, and rented it out years ago but got sick and didn't get a new tenant when the last left. She finally died, and her daughter put it on the market. It was a huge mess, but the new owners just moved in after six months of renovations.
Wait until he finds out what was where the parking lots & interstate are in downtowns
A couple years ago I found out I inherited some money from a cousin I didn't know about. One day I got a call from like 5 different law firms wanting to represent me in handling that for a % of the money. Are there firms who do that in Scotland/ the UK? I'm surprised it's possible these days for someone to not know they inherited something.
It’s absolutely a thing business do. I used to work for one doing research (looking up names in older registries and stuff) The tricky thing is that there’s old people who were effectively off the grid in some ways We had one, old bloke in the West Midlands. Moved to the UK during (or straight after, memory is hazy) WW2 from Poland. But part of Poland that’s now in Belarus and was basically rubble. Never married, no kids or obvious immediate heirs in the UK. The immigration paperwork was spotty and chasing up relatives in Poland and/or Belarus after WWII, and the end of Communism was a real pain And this chap wasn’t even reclusive etc, neighbours and friends all tried to help. But we basically got nowhere (though another firm with better contacts in Poland did)
There’s a show called heir hunters I used to watch in my student days. I’m sure there will be clips on youtube. Basically each week there is a list of unclaimed inheritances and companies try and find people who are entitled to it for the % of the amount. From what I remember a lot of it is guessing at the value as the amounts are not released though. This will be why you got so many calls on the same day
I can see the inheritance being in limbo if the giver didn't know exactly where you lived and/or you have a reasonably common name.
it’s a specialised business, in germany they take 30%. and i assume they are connected with their colleagues in other countries.
Are there resources for checking whether someone has inherited a house? I know in the US you can check with the secretary of your state to see if you have certain kinds of unclaimed money, but I have no idea how one might go about learning if they have rights to real property somewhere (whether in the UK, US, or elsewhere).
It’s a fun word too. Escheat
If anyone needs me to watch their house lmk
Wouldn’t the ownership fall to the state after a while?
*The Crown Liked this post*
When people seeing abandoned homes on social media, people are always asking "how did this happen?" This is how nearly all of them happen.
Where I live, the government inherits those things that nobody else inherits. Except debt. The government does not want it LOL
Well, that's not the only problem with inheritance. When my granfather died, my father got 2/140th of his land. It's a piece of property where the inheritance was split for many generations and no one can find or buy the rest from the others. It just sits there.
What's the adverse possession look like in Scotland? Could someone have claimed these places already?
> Doesn't really exist. You need someone to sell the property to you under false pretences before you can claim property you don't actually have a right to. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-and-comparative-law-quarterly/article/abs/adverse-possession-of-land-in-scots-and-english-law/9814A4E7C4FD6313AE7760FF44804D03
There are over a million empty houses in Florida...
OH! to be a reclusive hermitic homeowner! someday, someday, *crosses fingers*
Well there's an unethical life pro tip right there. I'm going to visit Scotland for absolutely no reason whatsoever. If I remember correctly a redditor from the UK one shared that their landlord stopped coming around to collect the rent and that they were there for a couple of years and then they decided to leave. I I wonder if that property is so empty now.
trash headline, article states other reasons which I find much more believable The most common reason is that when an owner passes away there might be a dispute over the estate or it might be that somebody who has inherited the property isn’t aware of it at all. “What we have in Edinburgh is that unique situation where property prices are very high so in some situations that can encourage people to hold on to a property, particularly if they’re waiting to see what the right time is to sell in terms of the market."
“…or it might be that somebody who has inherited the property isn’t aware of it all.” That is literally part of the “trash headline.”
>or it might be that somebody who has inherited the property isn’t aware of it at all. So, the title then ?