As we come to the end of Empty Homes Week, it feels timely to ask a simple but important question: If we are struggling to build enough new homes, why are so many existing homes standing empty?
The Building Target Gap
The current Government target is to deliver 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament. However, recent reporting suggests that delivery is significantly behind pace. In the first year, approximately 143,000 homes were completed. At current rates, projections indicate that total output could fall substantially short of the headline target.
Even if planning reforms accelerate delivery, large-scale new build developments take years, sometimes decades — to progress from allocation to occupation. Land acquisition, planning permission, infrastructure works, viability assessments and build programmes all create delay.
Meanwhile, we already have homes.
The Scale of the Problem
Across the UK, the number of properties not in active residential use is striking. Estimates suggest:
- Around 700,000 homes are empty and unfurnished
- Approximately 265,000 are long-term empty (unoccupied for more than six months)
- When second homes and other non-permanent residences are included, the figure approaches one million properties
At the same time, homelessness and housing insecurity remain pressing issues, with hundreds of thousands of people in England alone without stable accommodation.
The contrast is difficult to ignore.
What We See in Practice
Within the Empty Homes Team at Taylor Emmet, we regularly encounter properties that have been left vacant for years, often following an intestacy, unresolved probate, or absent beneficiaries.
Many of these homes:
- Fall into disrepair
- Attract vandalism, vermin or squatting
- Depress neighbouring property values
- Become a burden on local authorities
In many cases, the issue is not unwillingness to sell or redevelop, it is legal complexity. Title defects, missing executors, unknown heirs, insolvency concerns, or stalled estate administration can all leave a property effectively “stuck”.
Bringing Empty Homes Back Into Use
Reinstating empty homes is often:
- Faster than new build development
- Cheaper in infrastructure terms
- More environmentally sustainable (retrofitting rather than building from scratch)
- Community-positive, reducing blight and anti-social behaviour
Through collaboration with local authorities, we see firsthand how resolving legal barriers can unlock housing stock that would otherwise remain dormant.
A Complement — Not an Alternative
This is not an argument against new homes. Clearly the UK desperately needs both.
But if current building trajectories suggest targets may be missed, then tackling empty homes must form part of the solution. Even bringing a fraction of long-term empty properties back into circulation would make a meaningful difference while new supply catches up.
Empty Homes Week is a reminder that the housing crisis is not solely about how many homes we build, but also how effectively we use the homes we already have.
If we want to address supply meaningfully, we must look not only at cranes on the skyline, but at the boarded-up houses on our streets.