To think that Boris bringing back the 'Right to buy' scheme from the 80s is a terrible idea

[somewhereoverthechipshop]

Just this really. I think it's a slap in the face for all those private renters who cannot afford to buy a home, and just a horrible idea.
Boris Johnson mulls a new Right to Buy scheme as housebuilding hits the curb (cityam.com)

Not sure if link above works, but you can google it.
Evidently he is 'mulling over' the idea of bringing back Margaret Thatcher's scheme from the late 80s that decimated this country's council housing stock.
Just wondered what other people thought about it?

It's mad isn't it really. Everyone on a middle class talkboard jealous of the plebs on the sosh.

YY @JingsWullie A lot of key workers live in social housing. The ones who were serving the laptop class during the lockdowns. Now back to the default setting as i predicted it would be.

@woodenwindchimes I think the jealousy towards people in social housing generally comes from private renters, rather than owner occupiers. There might be a few owners who think the grass is always greener but I doubt many owners would swap places with social housing tenants.

This is such an utterly pathetic comment and really is missing the point in the biggest way. People who can afford mortgages (particularly now) are generally bloody grateful! We absolutely have to have some affordable housing safely ring fenced for people to rent from councils and housing associations in this country. Now more than ever when private investment in housing (both from abroad and in the form of BTL and second home owners) has sent prices absolutely insane. Anything else is just nuts and means increased housing benefit costs GOING INTO THE POCKETS OF PRIVATE LANDLORDS. You'd think it would be easy enough to understand.

Terrible idea but I suppose he wants to do something to appeal to the new Conservative voters in the old Red Wall areas and of course distract from party gate.
Of course it's a bad idea, council housing has never recovered from right to buy and now he is planning on spreading the problem onto housing associations too. It will make renting even more unaffordable and will.lead to a huge loss of social housing . Like council houses they never be replaced. Why would HA build more houses if people can buy them off them cheap.

I'm sort of torn. Logically it doesn't make sense to sell off house at a cheaper price than new houses can be built, therefore even a smaller stock of public housing.
But on the other hand a very close friend Di buy her council house and it put her on the housing ladder which meant she could became more mobile.
So although I lean against the idea, at the same time I can see a lot of good people benefitting from it.

Thank you for posting that. You saved me the trouble.

Unfortunately this is the only way some people will get the chance to own a home.

Save for a depost>house prices rise>save more>house prices rise again>save more and so on.

Maybe if wages rises inline with house prices we wouldn't need the right to buy scheme

They seem to be upset they went straight for a mortgage rather than the social route though. Surely their way is the "better" or more desirable way and was a life ambition, but on this thread people doing it the social way is unfair on them somehow. Do it that way then?

I don't blame private renters for being pissed off at this. They can't afford to buy a house, and the 'help to buy' is often a bullshit excuse for developers to build more houses closer together. And they still aren't affordable.

But someone in a council house can give a few thousand, get their house with probably not a big mortgage. And council houses generally aren't small, I've seen private homes that are smaller.

No one needs to own. It's a luxury, not a right. You have a right to have a roof over your head, but not to own it. I don't see why we should push to benefit those at a lower income before we bother helping those on higher incomes.

The housing market needs a massive reboot really. But it's never going to happen. You would have to drop house prices to maybe 1990s prices. And keep them at that, not allow them to get any higher. No increase at all, not unless wages actually increase and everything increases inline.

I give it 10-15 mins before a home owner comes in screaming that that cannot happen...

You see so many ex-council properties up for private rent round here

Lol. Private landlords already cost us £12billion a year. That's £120 billion in this last decade. Carly from Rochdale being able to offset the rent money she's been paying for the past decade against an asset that will likely be eventually stripped from her in care costs 20 years hence is not the problem.

@DD7Superstar Sadly im not surprised. The contractors doing the electric checks for our HA have blown sockets and a shower unit and this is in more than one home. The homes that have failed the check have been waiting for many weeks to have it rectified. Still waiting yet they claim "its for your safety" The most chilling words in the English language. If i was really about safety none of this stuff would be happening. The tenant with the broken shower is still waiting for it to be fixed six weeks on. Because of something THEY insisted on doing, not even a job that she asked for.

Would there though? People in social housing pay to their non profit provider. They earn money, it goes to the provider, eventually they may be able to offset and buy.

People in private rent pay to their landlords, collectively those rents cost us £12 billion a year, no chance to buy/offset, that money's just gone. Then on top of that they have to save a deposit and go on hawk to the bank. How many thousands is that no longer available?

Obviously to completely square the circle you'd need to be ploughing the proceeds of sale from social housing back into the enterprises. That doesn't happen and that's a huge flaw. But even outwith that it's cheaper for the Exchequer and generates more cash than the private renting + buying model.

Yes that makes more sense. This policy is a fart of nothingness to me. I thought the policy never went away and it does nothing to help people like me who have a decent income, but with such high rents can't afford to buy. The solutions this lot come up with only seem to fix 5% of any problem and that's how they like it. They wouldn't introduce a cap in property as it would impact their personal wealth.

Will they replenish the stock? Probably not.

Given that all of the Tories policies that benefit people haven't happened (only the ones to that kick us in the balls/fanny instead), this will probably never happen anyway. It's a load of fluff.

I think right to buy was abolished in Scotland some time ago, or at least in my area

If I were in charge, I would clamp down on holiday homes that sit empty for most of the year. At least holiday rentals generate income from holiday makers

We gave up a council property in Scotland years ago when we moved south for a work opportunity. We rented privately with no chance of social housing. We scraped a deposit and bought, paying the mortgage was sometimes a struggle, as was the cost of home maintenance.

At the time I quite resented the fact that my manager on a really good salary had a nice council house, which he then bought cheaply. I thought someone in his position should have moved on when he could afford to buy.

The only social housing that should be sold IMO are the properties that are unpopular. Sell them cheaply with buyers' contracted to bring them up to scratch and live in them for a specified time. Otherwise England should follow Scotland and Wales and withdraw the RTB not expand it.

Social housing shouldn't be sold off, especially not below market value. If you can afford to buy a house, buy one and leave the social housing for someone who wants secure long term rental accommodation.
Private rentals in themselves aren't a bad thing. Before we bought here we rented from a private landlord who had a large portfolio of properties. He charged reasonable rent, took good care of his properties and dealt with problems promptly. In fact it was an advantage that he had so many properties (basically owned a village) as he also employed local handymen to go round same day if you needed something fixing.
Bad landlords are the problem, whether that's councils making tenants rip out perfectly good carpets instead of leaving it for the next person if they want it, or private landlords ignoring mould problems and leaving tenants with mice problems. Rent doesn't need taxing more (or landlords will just put the rent up), bad landlords need identifying and fining or even banning from acting as a landlord. Good landlords are part of the solution. Not everyone should be in their own home or a council house, there are lots of reasons to rent.

Why does their ethnicity matter?

The thing is many housing association properties these days charge the same as private rent. It isn't like before where they were actually more affordable.

Helping poorer people who would have no other way of ever buying a house regardless of what choices they made is a great idea. But, the trouble is even with a massive discount most of these housing association tenants still wouldn't be able to buy as it would still be too expensive.

A house goes from 400,000 to 320,000. What difference does that actually make to someone on 20,000 a year?

Perhaps there should be an alternative where by all renters who have had tough circumstances occur a discount on the open market for every year they rent a property or something. I know there will likely be all sorts of problems as it is just off the top of my head but surely there is something like this that could work. Maybe this discount could be used against shared ownership too.

This is pretty likely to be untrue.

Ethnicity/race usually only matters when trying to stir up racism.

Boris wants to encourage “right to buy” to help young people get on the housing ladder. However, I think the majority of social housing is not occupied by young people unless they are living with their baby boomer parents. Those parents are entitled to pass the property to their children x1. Therefore, I don’t actually see how this policy will help young people get on the housing ladder.

Johnson doesn't actually give a shit about young people.

The policy is not intended to ever happen, it has been announced multiple times, it is a cheap headline aimed at the gullible.