Owners of second homes in Wales are having to sell up. That’s no disaster: it’s a godsend | Will Hayward
www.theguardian.com
Council tax hikes on holiday homes aren’t ‘anti-English’ or detrimental to tourism. This is about preserving embattled communities, says Guardian columnist Will Hayward

geteilt von: https://sh.itjust.works/post/38301389

To try to tackle this, the Welsh Labour government, alongside Plaid Cymru, introduced measures to curb second-home ownership. This included giving councils the ability to push council tax on second homes to 300% the usual rate. They also closed a loophole whereby second-home owners could register as a business in order to pay the much lower business rates.

Gwynedd council used these powers to hike council tax to 150% in April 2023. By the end of 2024, house prices had fallen by 12.4% as second-home owners tried to sell up. In Pembrokeshire, house prices fell by 8.9% after the council increased the council tax to 200% on second homes (though this was reduced to 150% recently).

  • Triasha@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 hours ago

    This is a reference to communist revolutions in Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Venezuela.

    Dictators took power in violent revolutions and they did succeed in redistributing wealth but at the cost of thousands to millions of lives, most of whom were civilians.

    • splendoruranium@infosec.pubEnglish
      1·
      4 minutes ago

      I mean I can see that, I just don’t know what it has to do with this article. Nothing there or in this thread suggests to me that violent autocracies were ever under serious consideration as a contender for “solution to housing crisis in Wales”. It looked like the original comment was replying to some kind of previous conversation that I was unaware of.