Right to buy - grossly unfair on private renters and private home owners

[Winterday1991]

Is it just me or is RTB grossly unfair. People that already have cheap subsidised rent and a secure tenancy can get over to £105k off the market value of their council property.

This seems so unfair to us who have to brought in the private market at full market price and private renters who often do not have secure long term tenancies. Why should the public subsidise this?

It fulfills an ideological aim: that people 'should' somehow aspire to home ownership. In some ways it reduces the class divide between homeowners and social housing renters. In theory most parties would support the aim, if not the actual policy.

But it's a lot of money to serve that aim which is allocated solely to those who already have a social housing tenancy and are able and willing to buy the property. The allocation of the funds is very arbitrary. It's politically enticing because the 'subsidy' doesn't show up on anyone's accounts so the immediate budgetary cost appears to be nothing. If you had to subsidise people to buy a privately owned property, you'd have to write out a big cheque. It's a jam-today policy, but with an unseen long term cost.

And it's left local authorities critically short of housing. The real problem is: we haven't allowed house building to keep up with the increase in population.

I know of one housing association (in Scotland) that actively tries to buy back any suitable houses that come on the market, especially 3 beds, of which it's critically short.

I’m in social housing my rent is neither cheap nor subsidised. The house a few doors down is up for private rent and works out at roughly £100 a month more than I am paying. Please tell me who is subsiding my rent so I can have a word with them about the piss poor job they are doing.

You're wrong. Take Lincoln for example (just because it came first in a Google search).

The council charge just £88 per week for a 3 bed property under their social housing rent bracket, and £129.85 per week for their affordable rent bracket.

They have 7396 properties on their social rent, and just 375 properties on their affordable rent. They even specify that their affordable rent is set at 80% market value.

I'd imagine that most councils operate a similar policy.

Source: https://www.lincoln.gov.uk/downloads/file/49/council-house-and-garage-rents-2023-to-2024

I think there might be a rule that if you sell your council house within 10 years of using the RTB scheme then you first have to offer to sell it back to the council at a reduced rate or something to that effect. Could be wrong though

It was a very very short sighted policy as it never really planned for how these lost homes will be replaced. It was all because traditionally the conservative voter was a home owner so thatcher wanted as many of those as possible.

@RudsyFarmer Margaret Thatcher introduced right to buy, assuming that it would convert council tenants into home-owning Tory voters

Is right to buy still an option in England? I assumed it had been abolished years ago (as in Scotland)

This is the issue for me. We are at a loss for social housing and selling them on cheaply means more and more people on the list for council housing who are stuck waiting.

Of we had more social and affordable housing being built and fewer people languishing on lists desperate for homes I don’t think I’d feel the same way.

Well, going by previous threads on here the houses are on estates that a lot of people don’t want to live on anyway 🤷‍♀️. Should more social housing have been built to counteract the losses? Perhaps but then people wouldn’t be happy that those on a low income/ unemployed etc were getting a brand new house at discounted rates. It really is a no win situation. I believe some councils have an open market purchase scheme to help address the shortage of social housing. To be honest I found the help to buy policy worse. Encouraging first time buyers to buy expensive houses on new build estates that they just could not afford without a large loan from the govt. I think ‘right to buy’ and ‘help to buy’ have both ceased in England now anyway.

Even with cheaper rent some will have paid a good chunk towards it before they buy.

Like other homeowners they are then responsible for the upkeep.

If houses sold were replaced then it would have been workable I think.

My friend has been offered 10 per cent reduction to buy her house. That's £30,000. She has already paid £72,000 in rent. The mortgage would be more than twice her rent so she's not going to buy it. I don't know where OP gets her figures from.

they are paying to rent. Private renters don't pay a 'good chunk' and then expect to be buy at a discount?

https://www.gov.uk/right-to-buy-buying-your-council-home/discounts

£126K discount in London!

You always get some bright spark on threads about injustices pointing out that "life isn't fair" as if that's the end of the matter and we shouldn't want society to be fairer. Imagine if our ancesters had said that. "Let's not bother fighting for women to get the vote. Life isn't fair. Let's carry on as we are and not discuss it."

Absolutely. It stinks.

Where still has ot?
My area in Scotland doesn't.

Yes it was wrong. Years ago I worked in conveyancing and saw many people buy their council house then sell it 3 years later for a huge profit.
At the same time, my friend and her 2 children were running from her violent husband. There were no houses to put her in. They all went into a hostel amd ended up living with family hundreds of miles away having to remove her children from the school they knew. It was short sighted and had nothing to do with giving people a leg up. It was to reduce the money spent by councils.

Of course it is unfair, and it reduces the availability of social housing, forcing people to either pay sky-high rents (sometimes to landlords who got the house through the RTB in the first place!) or people stay in sub-standard, mold infested accommodation because they don't want to give up a council house.

When houses are being sold for less than market value, it will be impossible to replace the stock, meaning private landlords are the winners here.

That said, someone inheriting a house/large sums of money and passing it on through the generations is also "unfair", but people seem a lot more comfortable accepting that as ok.

Don't blame him, really.

@NeedToChangeName

My Dad always said that homeowners with a mortgage to pay are less likely to strike which was another bonus for Thatcher, etc.

Obviously we then had the miners strikes which may have proved that theory wrong.

Houses
You get a 35% discount if you’ve been a public sector tenant for between 3 and 5 years.
After 5 years, the discount goes up 1% for every extra year you’ve been a public sector tenant, up to a maximum of 70% or £96,000 across England and £127,900 in London boroughs (whichever is lower).
Flats
You get a 50% discount if you’ve been a public sector tenant for between 3 and 5 years.
After 5 years, the discount goes up 2% for every extra year you’ve been a public sector tenant, up to a maximum of 70% or £96,000 across England and £127,900 in London boroughs (whichever is lower).

My ex neighbour told me that she would 'start looking after her house' when she was able to buy it when her dad died. I don't mean decorating but basic stuff like picking up dog poo, putting her bins out, cleaning her dog paw prints off the window (you couldn't see in it was so dirty). Ironically the state of her house brought our house's worth down considerably, which I think she relished.

Of course it is. It always has been a slap in the face for those who have to work for everything. This country does not care about fair, and increasingly doesn’t care about what works either. That’s why the place is falling apart.

I don't like it because we need more social housing, and this policy has resulted in fewer and lower quality social housing.
But I don't think it's unfair just because some people have to pay more for their homes. That sounds like resentment which is never a good way to formulate policy .

Winterday1991
Right to buy is still going in my part of the UK. Have to be a social housing tenant for 10 year or more to qualify