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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

>The Kitchen Nightmares host unsuccessfully attempted to free himself from the lease in a legal battle at the High Court in 2015.

i'm guessing it's been vacant since at least then?

There needs to be some mechanism for communities to reclaim spaces like this. they have value to a town, and leaving them vacant has a cost. i'm not sure giving them over to squatters is the right solution, but there needs to be consequences for property owners who harm a community by taking up space and ensuring it provides zero value to anybody by leaving it vacant.

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That pub closed last month according to https://whatpub.com/pubs/NLD/5989/york-albany-london

The property owner pays taxes, right? So the mechanism now is that investors don’t like to pay taxes and expenses without income to offset.

I don’t know if the UK has eminent domain, but in the US the city can use eminent domain to purchase and do something. But in this case, I think if anyone wanted that property, they would purchase it. So it’s a bit of a tough problem to fix by government intervention.

And Gordon Ramsey restaurants are pretty luxury, so it’s not like there’s some essential gap by this pub being empty until someone wants to purchase the space.

>The property owner pays taxes, right?

My understanding is that they do not, for a listed building that is vacant.

Well that's an easy fix right there. In the US you pay property taxes regardless.

Not exactly. I mean, in the US, as far as I know in all/most jurisdictions you don't get a different tax rate depending on whether the property is vacant or not. But in many places you can get a sizable property tax deduction for historic designated properties, sometimes equal to 100% of the value of the structure. Note that in the UK "listed building" means the property is registered as being historically significant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_building.

That's pretty rare though, especially in the US. And generally afaik, historic listings here impose a cost on the homeowner but not a benefit (i.e. a tax break).

That seems odd as in the UK property taxes are based on ownership, not vacancy. What makes you think vacant properties aren’t subject to taxes?

The exemption for vacant buildings only applies to listed buildings in the UK. E.g. https://www.clearway.co.uk/news/does-a-landlord-have-to-pay-... :

> If your commercial property belongs to one or more of the following categories, you’ll be eligible for an extended period of relief for business rates, provided that your property is fully empty and not in use:

...

> If your building is a listed building, you will only begin paying business rates once the property is occupied once again

Google reviews from 10 months ago, so at least active till then

Double the taxes every year it's vacant.

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