Long-Term Empty Properties and Second Homes

Councils classify some properties in their area as long-term empty, unoccupied, or second homes for the purposes of calculating council tax liabilities. These statuses impact on the council tax through exemptions for unoccupied properties, discounts for second homes and some long term empty properties, or a levy for some long term empty properties. As a result information on the numbers of such properties is sourced from Council tax base returns. This is collected annually from local authorities and is available for:

• Long-term empty properties: generally, properties which have been empty for more than 6 months and are liable for council tax. A 100% premium (double the full rate) can be applied by local authorities to homes that have been empty for more than 12 months.
• Unoccupied exemptions: generally, properties which are empty and unfurnished for less than 6 months and exempt from paying council tax.
• Second homes: homes which are furnished and lived in for at least 25 days in a 12-month period but not as someone’s main residence.

It has been identified that some local authorities have included properties for a shorter period in their data returned for ‘long-term empty’ properties. The number of ‘long-term empty’ properties reported in these statistics will therefore be overstated in such instances. We are not able to quantify the impact on these published statistics yet but we are working with local authorities to improve the quality of the data on empty homes. 

Trends over time within each of these categories should be interpreted with some caution, given that increases and decreases can be caused in part by reclassification exercises which local authorities carry out from time to time, or issues with management information systems, rather than being real changes in the numbers of properties.

Empty properties are of particular interest as they can help increase the supply of occupied housing in Scotland when brought back into use.

There are several factors that can impact on the number of long term empty properties and second homes that are counted through the council tax statistics including changes to council tax liability policy and management information systems.

Regarding policy changes, from 1st April 2013, local authorities gained the discretionary power to remove the council tax discount associated with long term empty properties or to set a council tax increase of up to 100% on certain properties which have been empty for 12 months or more. Prior to April 2017, second homes were entitled to a council tax discount of between 10% and 50%, and as of April 2017, local authorities were also given the option to remove the council tax discount on second homes. For 2022-23, 25 out of the 32 local authorities have removed the council tax discount on second homes, 6 will retain the 10% discount and in one local authority from 1 October 2019 a second home discount of 10% will only apply for a period of 12 months from the date the property was last occupied as a sole or main residence, following the 12 month period the discount will be removed.

Management information systems can also have an impact on how properties are recorded. In addition, there have also been some improvements in the data held by some local authorities leading to the reclassification of a number of properties between the long term empty and second home categories. These changes should be kept in mind when comparing the numbers in recent years. An audit on long-term empty homes policy, including the methodology used to measure empty homes was published by the Scottish Government in September 2023: Bringing empty homes back into use: audit of privately owned empty homes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

In addition, there may have been some impact of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions on the levels of empty homes in 2020 due to COVID-lockdown restrictions between mid-March and late June 2020. A correction for the empty homes figure for Aberdeen City in 2021/22 has been included for this year’s council tax data release.

The latest council tax data shows that for September 2023 there were 24,061 second homes, 47,293 unoccupied exemptions which have generally been empty and unfurnished for less than 6 months, and 46,217 long term empty properties that had been empty for more than 6 months. Of those that had been empty for more than 6 months, just under two-thirds (28,280 or 61%) had been empty for over 12 months, and of those 21,752 had a council tax discount below 10% or a council tax increase applied under the new powers described above.

Chart 17: The number of long term empty properties, according to council tax data, has increased by 4% between 2022 and 2023, whereas the number of second homes decreased by 1% and the number of unoccupied exemptions remained stable.

Chart 17 above shows that, since 2005, the number of long term empty properties as recorded in council tax data has generally been on the rise, having tripled over this period. Some of the rises in 2013 to 2015 will be due to the reclassification of some properties in the light of the new powers described above. There were slight decreases between 2008 and 2009 and 2015 and 2016, but an increase since then until 2020.

The increase in the number of empty properties in the year 2020 was likely to be associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, which directly affected both the property rental and sales markets, with the movement restrictions in place also having a range of other impacts, with the number of long-term empty properties subsequently falling in 2021. In the latest year as of September 2023, the number of long term empty properties increased by 4% (1,616 properties) to 46,217, with the number of properties 13% (5,254 homes) above the 2019 pre-Covid position.

Trends in the number of second homes recorded in council tax data show an increase from 35,036 in 2008 to 40,599 in 2012. This was followed by reductions in the number of second homes in 2013 to 2016 to 26,140 which are also likely to be at least partly due to reclassification, following which the number then dropped further to 24,314 in 2019. In the latest year, the number of second homes (24,061) is 1% (226 homes) lower in 2023 than in 2022.

The number of unoccupied exemptions has remained relatively steady each year since 2005 except for a slight increase in 2008, with levels of unoccupied exemptions being at 46,530 in 2005 and 44,143 in 2020. However, the number of unoccupied exemptions increased in 2021 to 45,801. In the year to end September 2022, it increased again, and has since remained level, at 47,293 in the year to end September 2023.

After a decrease between 2005 and 2006 the total number of long term empty properties and second homes increased from 52,823 in 2006 to 66,053 in 2012 (13,230 dwellings or 24%). It has since fallen to 59,763 in 2014 before increasing to 71,799 in 2020 (with a slight peak of 63,736 in 2015), before falling in 2021. In has since increased in 2022, and again in the year to end September 2023 by 2% (1,390 homes) to 70,278.