To think it's out of order to buy your council house then sell it to a private landlord ?

[PaulinesPenStash]

Bought their council house cheap from the local authority a few years ago, approx half market value

In our local authority you can't sell for 5 years. But once able to sell, they sold it within a week of it going on the market and Made about 100k in profit selling it (to a private landlord). with the proceeds of the sale they will be soon moving into a new much bigger, nicer house in a lovely area

Meanwhile some poor fucker will be soon be renting their old house for about double the council rent

This person is, by the way, an out and proud Labour activist and member

So. Aibu to think it's a shit thing to do?

Well yes.
To get any decent discount they must have rented for years.
Even after five years there is a sliding scale to the discount and you have to pay back.
If the LA were allowed to use the money from the sale to build a replacement house then there would still be a rental house.
So be pissed off that central gov kept the money, sure, but YABU to blame an individual.

Blame the council not the seller or buyer.

It's legal and it has gone on for decades.

I personally would never buy an ex-council house for exactly that reason, but that's all I can do about it - which is basically nothing.

Totally shameful that this should be allowed in the first place. Why is it?

I once rented a privately owned ex council house, I got some housing benefit at the time as a full time working single mum.
My house's rent was just under twice that of the council owned ones on my street, but our council won't rent to those who can 'afford ' private housing.
I hated it but had no choice at the time.

@TheQueef

Rented it for 7 years prior to buying. Got the house due to almost being made homeless by cunty private LL

YANBU but this has happened for decades, people make a business out of it. My former landlord did, he bought lots of ex council properties on the same estate for 30k and rented them out. He’s a millionaire now. I worked out that over the four years I lived there, he made 24k out of me alone.

He’s sold all of the properties now, I only know because a friend lived in another one and when she moved out, he said he was selling it. They sold my old house for 100k, 70k profit for him plus all of the rent money he made from it.

It’s why I don’t think right to buy is a good thing. It has been abused.

Nope. I don’t see the problem. I would do the same.

So they won't have maximum discount for 7 years (there are RTB calculator online)
Have house prices gone up loads in the last five years there? If not someone is exaggerating.

It's not the council that is to blame, they are obliged to sell within the law; it is the fault of the government who introduced the right to buy scheme.

You don't have to wait long for a discount. You get a 35 % discount after you have been a tenant for 3 years. The sliding scale on what you have to pay back is if you sell between one to 5 years. After that there is nothing to pay back.

Once the tenant has bought and the social landlord does not want to buy it back, then they can sell to whoever they like. It is not like they have to stay in the same house for ever. Once they put up the house for sale, they would likely sell to anyone who wishes to buy it.

I thought that was the whole point of Right to Buy, so you could flip it and make a profit? I certainly don't know anybody who bought their house under Right to Buy and actually (hollow laugh) stayed living in it.

Which is why I'm completely opposed to it, but there's nothing like free money to make people support a sell-off of public assets is there?

Obviously it’s a lottery ticket and it shouldn’t happen.

I don’t blame anyone for doing it, they’re just buying low and selling high.

Personally I was outraged when Thatcher's government allowed local Authority to sell their houses in the 80s.
I had many an argument with a colleague who ranted about his nan and she absolutely should buy her house because she has rented it all her life. My argument was yes, that's what she has done, rented it!l, not paid a mortgage..She will be dead in less than 10 years and her family benefit hugely the minute it is sold and a family who need social housing have lost out.
Your post isnt a new occurrence Op, it's been happening for a few decades now.

Councils/HA can't refuse to sell. The discount is connected to length of renting. Irrespective of the circumstances which led to them renting.

There is a restriction on when they can sell on. They waited. They sold. That it sold within a week shows the demand is there for it at the price sold. Who they sold to is irrelevant.

They may als9 have contacted the Council to see about a buy back. Probably the Council didn't offer high enough.

It's been happening since the 1980s OP!

Personally I was outraged when Thatcher's government allowed local Authority to sell their houses in the 80s.

No, local authorities were allowed to sell their houses before that and many of them did. What the Thatcher government did was to oblige all local authorities to sell their houses with specific rules and discounts, regardless of local circumstances and need.

@TheQueef house prices have gone up a bit round here

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz yes they contacted the council to try and sell it back to them but they offered 10k below what they could get on the private market ...

CecilyP
Yes , you are correct.
I was quite young at the time. I remember lots of people buying their houses and I know some good came from it but I remember thinking about people who needed social housing but the stock was reduced.

It's been happening since the 80s, and it has always been markeed to people as "look, you can buy your house way below marke rate, then sell it on at a profit".

In the 1980s property boom people lined up potential buyers before they even applied for RTB (estate agents approached council tenants directly). Google "deferred transaction agreements" if you want to see some examples of completely naked profiteering at the expense of other taxpayers.

That's what it was intended for. You own your own home and can do what you want with it.
Good for them, I say.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I once rented anot ex council house. Landlord waited until he was allowed to sell. Then bought a new house with his new partner who'd done exactly the same with hers. It's crap to put it mildly

@Pinkfinkle how did he do that? You can't just buy up a load of council houses, only the tenant can and only the one they presently live in

YANBU. I think 40% of right to buy council houses are now owned by private landlords. Ridiculous when the state of social housing is so dire at the moment.
I know several people who made full use of the huge discounts, it’s a shame some people forget that they were once the person in need that they are now depriving.
It used to be a well known money making scheme among certain people I knew. The ‘single parent’ gets the council house, 2 months later the money making partner moves in, few years years later they buy with the discount. Ends up in private landlords hands and they end up quids up.