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?

Those new kitchens every 10 years..

The kitchens are cheap and fall to bits quickly you also don't get much choice. Choose between 3 cupboard doors and 2 worktops.

Plus it's not every ten years. Mine is 15 years old and needs replacing but they say it's OK for now.

Winterday1991
I'm in social housing and pay full rent. Currently £102. 80 per week. Takes ages to get them to come out for repairs

I think it's been abolished in Wales,the council is buying them back where we live.

If you sell your RTB within 5 years of purchase you have to pay a proportion of the discount back

Report to the Council if you think this hasn't happened, they can pursue

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

The world we live in is not fair.

This. It is no more unfair than one person receiving a large bump from the bank of mum and dad in order to buy, or a large inheritance.

I'm sure RTB isn't a thing in most councils I was a council tenant in 2010s and the RTB was scrapped, but we won't let that get in the way of a goady thread though 😃

Absolutely this.

On my estate there are large ex-council family homes that have built another house in the garden (corner plots)
You couldn’t make it up.
Get subsidised family home (fair enough), buy under RTB, then feather your own nest further by making a huge additional profit (off of something that should still be in the public domain) after buying the original house for next to nothing.

@Teapot32 every bloody time this old tripe gets rolled out “so unfair, not paying marKet rent, we are subsidising them” Ffs people need to just stfu. Here’s a few facts

1. I have NEVER had a new bathroom or kitchen! If you are lucky enough it’s the cheapest type nothing fancy or nice like private rents. Ffs
2. private rents are higher cause the renters are paying a landlord’s mortgage!
3. The only maintenance I get is a boiler service once a year. If something happens yes they come out to fix…….eventually like my fire escape window upstairs I reported broken start of October (common fault that happens with double glazing) my appointment is in December.
4. They are not decorated when you move in ,no carpets NOTHING! Gardens are more than likely very overgrown. You are responsible for everything.
5. You can’t move exactly where you want it’s a bit of a lottery. So if you get horrible neighbours well you’re buggered.

I so want to live in the ivory towers/cloud cuckoo land that some do. You also don’t contribute as a tax payer unless you earn in excess of £100k per annum. Under that amount you take out what you put in. NHS Education and so on.

It’s really pisses me of when you get judgy sorry jealous people going on about it every fucking year like it’s a new thing. Rant over

The thing is that you assume that RTB is about doing those in social housing a favour. The original and subsequent schemes were always about ridding the government of the expense of maintaining and managing social housing. To offload the property, they couldn't just say to inhabitants 'pay up or get out'. They were in social housing in the first place be ause they couldn't afford to rent or buy privately. It would hardly have been good PR to flog the houses off at private sale prices, leaving countless families homeless.
Yes, people benefitted, not least because, particularly in the South East, RTB purchased 60s social housing with big gardens are now worth big bucks. But the benefit of the tenants was not the primary purpose.
Ostensibly yes, it's unfair, but it was the only way the government could hope to have any chance of getting rid of huge swathes of council houses without causing uproar at the time.
Now, years down the line, we are seeing the effects of Thatcher's big drive for national home ownership. Not enough housing for those that need it. But RTB is still going on, because government still wants to be rid of the responsibility, whilst pretending it's doing people a big favour.
Those who benefit aren't going to argue. It is, after all, the only way they will own their own house.
It is,however, storing up yet more problems for the future. Flogging our national assets off is something the Tories are good at. Using the poorest as a tool to do it is also something they are good at.
I don't begrudge anyone who bought under the scheme. I do begrudge the back door method to phase out social housing. It amazes me the people who think Thatcher was the best thing since sliced bread saying, 'oh, it was so great, they just should have built more housing' because they genuinely don't understand what the point of the supposed 'generosity' was.

Yep my kitchens falling to bits and has been for years

The house is also really old so would have been next to nothing for the council to buy 90 odd years of rent means they've had the money back over and over again which is why it's slightly cheaper than private

I also doubt many people on MN would want to live in my area as most people on here seem to be afraid of their own shadows

I also work hard for what I have thanks very much 🙄 , being in a council house and unable to buy doesn't mean anyone on here is any better than I am

our L A are buying back ex council houses, flats especially.

It is unfair but....wouldn't we all do it if we could? Seriously?

Right to buy discount depends on how many years you’ve been a tenant.
I bought my house on RTB after paying full rent (as I worked full time so no rent benefit) for 16 years. I had hardly any repairs done in all my time renting unless I did them myself .
Being a single parent with no family to gift me a deposit - RTB allowed me to get on the housing ladder. Many of my wealthier friends had family support to get them on the housing ladder. I don’t begrudge them and neither they me .

If you sell within five years you have to repay a percentage of your discount (based on current sale price not purchase price )
If you sell within ten years you have to offer the council to buy it back - I offered and they didn’t want it. So I sold mine privately after my children flew the nest .

Absolutely. If you are in a position to buy your council property - do it!

It is unfair. An ex-colleague told me some of her relatives had bought under RTB in the ‘80s in Central London. They paid around £27k for a 2 bed maisonette. It would probably sell for close to a million now.

It wouldn’t feel SO unfair if banks/lenders were forced to take into account that if you’re paying £900pcm in rent then yes, you can afford to repay a mortgage at £700pcm. That was the difference in the rent I paid on a flat and the lady upstairs paid on her mortgage which I “couldn’t afford”.

I do remember reading, a long time ago, in one of the Sunday papers that ministers were looking to try and make lenders accept long term rent paid as evidence of affordability. Obviously nothing came of it, but it would be a nice idea.

RTB shaped the country’s housing, prices, rental, social housing and not in a good way.

It could have been so much better if councils were allowed to build new ones to replace those sold.

It would have been better if buyers roll over their ‘new’ for a few years and make big profits.

But back then the councils were seen as evil bogymen who couldn’t be trusted (by some) with a pair of safety scissors.

My colleague is in Housing Association property with reduced rents and apparently a new kitchen and bathroom every 10 years for free

This is BS and a common misconception!

Tenants also don’t get modernisation for “free” or “cheap” - most HA tenants also pay affordable rent for what is deemed affordable for the area their rental property is in.

Majority if not all HA/Council properties have standard life span modernisation, which are kitchen 25 years and bathrooms 30 years.

The policy exists and until the government make it like Scotland then people have a legal right to purchase their rental which has stringent requirements.

It would be absolutely bloody fine if successive governments had continued to build social housing. Then anyone who wanted to get involved would be able to.

The hilarious thing round here (in London) is people who do RtB on flats in very central but rather old and tatty blocks and then do the sad face picture rounds in the local newspapers when they receive big major works demands claiming it is unfair. I mean who did you think was going to have pay for it?

Anyway I would be a bit of a hypocrite to object to it fully as years ago Mr Monkey bought an ex council flat off the couple who exercised their RtB. It wasn't at a huge discount obviously but ex council flats are always cheaper than private ones so it was the only way he as a young FTB could afford to buy. He made a fair amout of money on it which put us in a good position now.

Wow, if you are that hard done by, just move out, and in to private rent. I'm pretty sure you won't though.

You have to be in quite a desperate housing situation to be first entitled to social housing and it costs society more to have people in private rentals with housing benefits paid or topping up low earners. It also costs society more in terms of transient communities and disrupted education or employment because of insecure housing.
I did a social policy degree and studied housing extensively. 1 in 3 of us used to live in council housing and it was introduced after WW2. Anyone who needed a council house could get one. Fast forward to the 1970s and the oil crisis - the country was in huge debt and needed to borrow money from the banks. The banks agreed as long as the government agreed to stop building council houses - they wanted to get their claws back into the housing market. Then Thatcher got into power - buying your own home appealed to tenants and also aligned with neoliberalism and individualism - i.e., being self-sufficient and not reliant on the government for housing. The money from sales of council houses went predominantly to the government and was used to pay off the debt from the 1970s. Councils to this day only get something like 20% back, making it impossible to replace social housing. The ideology remains that they want people to be self-sufficient - therefore building enough social housing is not a priority. Compounding issues is buy to let - the cheapest properties were bought up by landlords and this has made it difficult for first-time buyers to get on the ladder. Much of our economy is built upon property investment now. Building enough social housing would see property prices fall. In answer to your question, I don't feel resentful, but do think it is a deeply flawed policy. This country is too unequal to expect everyone to be able to buy their own home, and I regard secure, habitable and affordable housing as a basic need.

I do not come from wealth and had no inheritance or family support, I had to work for everything and so got trapped in private rent for 20 years. I’ve been thinking for a while that I’d be better off now if I’d got myself pregnant in my teens and been given a council house. Like many others I knew from my background. Got it under right to buy, made a killing selling it off, could have retired to France 10 years ago. This country has been more than unfair to those of us who work, it’s been taking the Pisa. And the piss too (edited bit)!

The whole housing system needs an overhaul. Available council houses are few and far between and shouldn’t be sold. On my street in Surrey the council houses pay around £850 and a private rental is currently around £2200! And right to buy still stands in this borough.
I feel no animosity to anyone benefitting from Social housing, however it absolutely isn’t a level playing field.