Cash-strapped councils also face the threat of the property being repossessed by lenders if the owner can no longer afford to pay off the mortgage, for which they are still liable. In this instance, local authorities lose everything they have spent on the property.
At a time when interest rates are rising again, there could be a higher risk of defaulting when owners are blocked from generating their own income from the property – which makes the council’s investment particularly vulnerable.
All this is why so few properties have ever been subject to EDMOs. In the past decade, just 20 applications have been made in England, while there have been none at all since 2021, including in Wales which has had the six-month threshold in place since 2012.
Although the threat of an EDMO can often be enough to compel owners to sell their empty property and avoid going all the way to a tribunal, councils still need to be in a position where they can afford to see through the process.
Yet given only a quarter of councils having a dedicated budget for empty homes work of any kind, according to industry body Propertymark, this is rarely the case.
Britain’s empty homes crisis is still in serious need of some solution, however.
In London alone, there are some 47,000 vacant properties, up from 19,800 in 2016 – a jump of nearly 140pc, according to the charity Action for Empty Homes.
