Empty private properties

Our most common approach to tackling a run-down empty home is to do the work 'in default', and, if the owner won't pay the bill, to force the sale of a property.

But we can use other powers in particular circumstances . . .

1. Selling a home to clear council tax debt

If the owner of a problem empty property has a large unpaid council tax bill, we can ask a court to give us permission to sell the property.

We can recover land charges, all the council tax debts, and our own costs from the sale price.

We call this a charging order property sale.

2. Helping sell an unwanted property

An owner may be unable to bring a property back into use and would rather sell it; they may have inherited it for example.

We can bring them together with a not-for-profit landlord like a housing association who will buy the property directly from the owner. The landlord will do the work the home needs and rent it out to a new tenant.

This is called voluntary acquisition.

3. Taking over the property to rent

If the problem property has been empty for six months, and the owner has not responded to requests to put it right, we can get a special order that allows us to take over the management of the property, and rent it out to tenants for seven years. The owner only gets income from the rent, after we recover our costs of making the property fit live in in the first place, and the regular cost of managing the property.

This is called an empty dwelling management order.

4. Compulsory purchase

Sometimes a property is causing such severe problems that it is 'blighting' an area. The only solution could be to use our powers to buy it from the owner, even if they don't want to sell. We will either demolish it or to sell it on to a not-for-profit landlord like a housing association to bring the property back into use.

This is called single property compulsory purchase.