Ernest Marples spent five years in the Army, then came home to his London flat and found a notice on the door.

It said, “Requisitioned.”

The flat was empty, but a London council had taken it anyway, so he lived in rented rooms until he’d argued to get it back.

By 1954, he was the junior housing minister, and he told the Commons how that felt:

I know what it is like to expect to go back to one’s home only to find a little notice on the door saying, “Requisitioned,” even though the place is still empty and may remain so for a considerable time.

The power behind that notice was Defence Regulation 51, a 1939 wartime measure first used to house families who’d been bombed out or evacuated.

In 1946, under Attlee’s Labour government, it was stretched to cover families who were simply badly housed.

At the end of 1954, councils still held 62,000 houses.

Parliament set a deadline of 31 March 1960, and when it came, gave councils up to another year on the last 2,000 or so dwellings.

A wartime emergency power was still sitting on people’s homes 15 years after the war ended…

Britain once introduced rent controls that were supposed to be temporary. How long did some regulated tenancies survive?


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Angela Rayner announced her own version in Liverpool on Saturday.

A council could take over a home left empty for six months, fill it with its own tenants, and keep it for up to seven years.

The tool is an Empty Dwelling Management Order (EDMO).

Speaking at the Labour conference she said:

With so many children and families still in need of a safe and secure home, we can’t sit by and allow 300,000 long-term empty dwellings to be left unused.

The housing ministry put out the details on Sunday. A home becomes eligible after six months of being empty, down from two years.

Councils also no longer need evidence of antisocial behaviour or local support before they go to the tribunal.

So why now?

Because Labour promised 1.5 million new homes by 2029, and current numbers have the running total at 392,400.

Rayner herself admits there’s “a slim chance” of hitting it.

When the state can’t build the houses, it goes looking for yours…

Whether anyone sleeps in your house was once your business. The law is about to interfere, so plan for the law.

Six ways to keep your keys

It all turns on two words: “wholly unoccupied.”

The Housing Act 2004 says that means “no part is occupied, whether lawfully or unlawfully.” It needs to be that way for six months.

A 2006 order then lists the homes a council can’t touch even when they’re empty, and Sunday’s release leaves that list alone.

1. Use it, and prove it. The order protects a home “occupied by the relevant proprietor or his guests on a temporary basis from time to time.”

How often is “from time to time”?

The law doesn’t set a number.

The council needs six empty months in a row. Every genuine stay resets the clock. A proper stay, you’d think, would comfortably meet that requirement once a month, and you almost certainly wouldn’t want to let three months pass without one.

An interesting thing might be, if you haven’t got a smart meter, to ring your energy supplier and ask for one. It costs nothing extra. You can choose to share readings every half hour.

Download the data every quarter and file it with train tickets, fuel receipts, or some receipts from the local Co-op. A year of that is a better witness than you are, and far better than a timer lamp.

2. Let it as a holiday home. The order covers one “whether or not it is let as such on a commercial basis.”

List it on Airbnb and screenshot the booking calendar every month. Get your mortgage lender’s consent and holiday-let insurance before the first guest arrives.

In London, an entire home is capped at 90 nights a year without planning permission, so mix bookings with your own stays.

3. Put it on the market. A home “genuinely on the market for sale or letting” is exempt.

If you’re selling, an agent will get it on Rightmove. If you’re doing it yourself, you can still do DIY packages with Purplebricks (yes, they’re still alive, but just with a different owner).

It’s worth considering that there’s nothing wrong with wanting top dollar for the property, or with viewings being slow and not much activity for a while. If it’s on the market, it’s on the market, right?

It still needs to be a reasonable price, and it’d be hard to defend the “genuine” part if someone actually offered the asking price. But then, if that did happen, you’d be getting top dollar, so it’s almost a win-win there too.

4. Get some stuff done. Building work isn’t a blanket exemption, because the tribunal only has to be satisfied the house won’t be lived in soon.

Get a signed builder’s quote with a start date and a finish date. Take dated photos of progress, keep invoices, and put the lot in one Google Drive folder.

A schedule with dates on it is what keeps the seizure officers away.

5. Answer the letter. Before it applies, the council has to try to reach you and find out what you’re doing to get the house occupied.

Reply in writing within a week. Set out the plan with dates, attach the folder, and keep proof you sent it.

6. Know the other exits. Your main home is covered while you’re living elsewhere for now, away caring, or in the forces like Marples.

Keep proof it’s still your main home, like your electoral roll entry and bank statements going to that address.

A dead owner’s home is covered until six months after probate. If you’re the executor, that’s your window to list it, let it, or move someone in.

However, bear in mind that the government is “exploring further changes to strengthen the EDMO regime,” so they might make things even harder again.

If it comes anyway, back the big landlord

I think this move would be disastrous.

Any law or order that allows for the seizure of someone’s property rights (be it a house or any other property) because it isn’t getting used is an abomination.

It fits right in with a deeper move towards the stealth socialist state that Burnham is taking things towards (the seizure of Avanti West Coast into public operation is another).

But if it does come, aside from the six steps outlined above, there’s at least a way to play it in the market as well.

Since 1 April 2025, councils can charge double council tax on a furnished second home.

The Renters’ Rights Act came into force on 1 May, and now the six-month EDMO rule is coming.

I used to have a rental property in the West Midlands, but sold it off several years ago because I could see the writing on the wall for smaller property investors.

All of this only continues the great property divide, where there are no small landlords left. Even so, it’s not suddenly going to mean everyone gets to own their own home. And therefore their tenants will still need somewhere to live…

Grainger (LSE: GRI) owns and runs rental homes. It’s the biggest residential landlord in the country. It benefits because it has the resources to absorb the landlord exodus. Don’t think the council has the time, or operational capacity to do any of this. Therefore, it’s conglomerates like Grainger that win.

In its half-year results from back in May, they said about the Renters’ Rights Act:

The new legislation strikes a balance between tenant and landlord rights, albeit it is contributing to structural changes in the sector with smaller, private landlords exiting, and larger scale, professional landlords gaining market share.

In the six months to 31 March, Grainger’s net rental income rose 7.8% to £66.1 million. It’s targeting £72 million of earnings by 2029, up 35% on 2025.

Grainger closed at 163.30p on Friday, and its tangible book value was around £2 billion. Yet with a market cap of around £1.2 billion it’s trading at 0.61 times price to book.

So you’re buying the homes at about 59p in the pound, with a forecast yield of 5.44%.

Where it could sting for Grainger is that a government willing to seize empty homes could also lump rent controls on the market next, which would hit Grainger directly.

And it’s been a rough trot for the company in the years after Covid. But it does seem like if this is a property market where there’s an exodus of small landlords, the big ones get bigger and accrue more value over the long run.

Either way, there are steps to take if you own empty second properties, and there are opportunities to play in the market if this stealth socialism comes into full force.

Neither paints a rosy picture, but rather than bemoan it, at least there’s something you can do about it.

Until next time,


Sam Volkering
Investment Director, Southbank Investment Research

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