You're absolutely correct that it's not solely an issue of landlords buying up property that's causing the shortage. I was just providing a possible legislative method to cut down on the number of properties being owned by speculators and corporate landlords.

There simply isn't enough housing being built for the population growth we've been seeing. That's 100% going to lead to an increase in prices.

In cities outside of London though there isn't always that same pressure (i.e. Liverpool still has a housing surplus), so why are housing costs rising past the point where people can afford to buy them? Supply and demand should mean that prices remain affordable for most people but they aren't.

A large number of rental properties are rented by investors of one form or another, if we can cut down on homes as speculative assets we should see more homes being sold to homeowners and prices fall back to more manageable levels for everyday people.

There are loads of other problems such as the UK building houses instead of things like apartments, planning permission bs, NIMBYism, economic activity being focused in the south, homeowners not wanting their valuations to go down, etc etc which are all part of the puzzle. Ensuring that more homes are owned by residents rather than investors can only be a good thing though imo.

I think if it's a first time build you could work something out to not punish developers for building houses which take a little time to sell, but you'd also want to avoid developers building and sitting on properties. That will probably already happen though as they'll want to recoup construction costs asap I imagine. For portfolio property buyers they'll be incentivised to sell which is only a good thing.

The EHS defines these as “homes that are primarily used as holiday homes (by family, friends or let to others as a holiday let) or are occupied while working away from home.”

This clearly doesn't include regular rental properties, so I don't see how it shows landlords are not a problem.

Well there are 4 million rental properties in the UK so your numbers don't quite add up. A very significant number of properties are purchased and rented as investment assets. No one is saying that ending landlord property portfolios will magically fix the issue overnight, but it certainly adds inflationary pressure on house prices and prices normal people out from being able to purchase homes. Houses should be homes first, not speculative assets.

Through taxation policy it should be possible for a family to move home and rent their old one, or rent an inherited one whilst waiting to sell, etc without much additional burden. But we shouldn't encourage private entities pricing out normal people from homes and forcing entire generations to only be renters.

The economic damage from high house prices and lack of generational wealth is way too expensive to allow this portion of the market to continue. Simultaneously we need to be building a fuckload more homes, yes, but there being other things to change shouldn't dismiss other helpful ideas.