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?

@Bilbo63 The post war "golden era" of social housing wasn't really like that. Often there were local residency requirements, people who were "respectable" and seen as being able to pay the rent were prioritised. Often undesirable and chaotic people were still left to the mercies of the private sector - see Cathy Come Home and Rachmanism.

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

It’s 10 year

There is also the different between right to buy (council tenants) and right to require (HA) depending on when your tenancy started depends on the discount you’re entitled too.

@TintinHadToBeMale but you have to be working to get a mortgage - even a right to buy one . So the people buying their house will be working too

I think the concern there for lenders is that although some people do pay more in rent than they would a mortgage, they don’t have a deposit. 100% mortgage obviously increases the risk of falling into negative equity and if anything goes wrong, the lender may suffer a financial loss.

@Fidgety31 Yeah - there was a lot of working around the system - adult children wanting to "help" their dear old mum buy her home. In some central London blocks older and vulnerable tenants were often aggressively leafleted by people offering to "help" them buy their flat.

I think the original idea was to allow people who had lived in their communities for decades to have a stake in their homes & those communities.

It also handily got responsibility for a lot of very outdated housing stock, much in need of new windows, doors, rewiring, kitchens, bathrooms etc. off the hands of councils who couldn't afford to update them.

Is it unfair - yes. As someone who has bought on the open market and never been entitled to a council house despite being a single mum. Do I feel hard done by? No. I get on with what I can achieve, because nothing we do will change the past.

Well that makes everything better then doesn’t it? I worked hard coming from nothing. The folk down the road who never bothered have seen huge increases in their minimum wage, rendering all my extra work valueless, and have had a cheap house in to the bargain. People trying to work up have been taken for mugs.

@HaudYerWheeshtYaWeeBellend it’s definitely five years on mine as I’ve already done it

@HighywayToHell

"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."

The fact that your rent is £100 cheaper shows that it is subsidised!

Your Right to Buy discount depends on where you live and whether you’re in a house or flat.

The maximum discount you can get is £84,200 or £112,300 if you live in London.

This is regardless of how long you’ve lived in your home, or how much it’s worth.

If you live in a house, you get a 35% discount if you've been a tenant for between three and five years. After five years, the discount goes up by 1% for every extra year you've been a tenant.

If you live in a flat, you get a 50% discount if you’ve been a tenant for between three and five years. After five years, the discount goes up by 2% for every extra year you’ve been a tenant.

In both cases, the maximum discount you can get is 70% – or £84,200 across England and £112,300 in London (whichever is lower). For example, if you’ve been a tenant for 10 years, you could buy your flat worth £100,000 for just £40,000 – using a 60% discount.

I’m in a council property, was newly built and we was facing homelessness, we are saving up for five years time to be able to do a right to buy on the property! It’s the first place we have had the stability, it’s been our first ever proper family home..

we would never be able to afford to buy if we went privately! We work our arses off in retail jobs (in our area there is literally nothing else available, even if you had the best degree going, chances of earning loads in our area is very slim”) so yeah, we will be buying the house when we are able to up our income/work our way up in work.. because we are lucky enough to have the stability.

I don’t think it’s fair to say “it’s not fair” just because it’s social housing, they wouldn’t have the system if it didn’t work, the only reason we don’t have enough social housing atm is because our country is far to overcrowded, if they tackled that situation first then more social housing would become available and more people would have the opportunity to buy there first home/get in the property ladder..

Ive always agreed with the right to buy system, even when we was the ones facing homelessness, because it gave us the a sense of something to work towards.

Having been outbid on several houses by those who had bought cheap and sold at huge profit, therefore had more spare cash, then I think it was hugely unfair

This was back in the day. Maybe there are more restrictions on selling on for profit now

What about all the people in your situation who will never get social housing? Don't they also deserve to get a foot on the housing ladder?

If you genuinely think that people whould be able to buy somewhere at a discount that they have been renting for a while - then how about we exend right to buy to private renters? Or is it just public bodies who should be forced to dispose of their assets at below market price?

There are other ways to do this - shared ownership, council backed mortgages (they used to be a thing in 1980s London)

This. By all means offer right to buy but tenants should not get it discounted and for every house sold through RTB a replacement should be built/purchased.

@Fidgety31 Apologies. I’ve just read our policy and it’s part of the legal procedure that you have to offer the HA/Council to buy the property first at market value.

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.

Then again, it's perfectly possible for a government to regulate private rentals to make them nearly as secure. Half of Europe does so, and there's still landlords willing to invest.

The fact that your rent is £100 cheaper shows that it is subsidised!

No it absolutely does not, the LL could be increasing the rental amount by £100 over the market value, unless you know the LL mortgage payment then your “fact” is BS!

The kitchen and bathrooms are not free they are maintenance covered by the rent paid. It's also highly unlikely to be every ten years that rumour is always trotted out.
RTB is a good idea it gives mostly lower income the opportunity to buy. Just because everyone can't benefit doesn't mean nobody should.

😂😂😂 no it just means that landlord has increased the rent since the last tenants left, but fear not my rent will increase in April too.

My HA replaces the kitchens and bathrooms every 15 years. We can choose if we want it done or not......I chose to have mine done and my rent went up 5% whilst those that didn't have the work done saw a 2% rise in rent, so I certainly didn't get it "for free".

You agreed with RTB when you were facing homelessness? Despite the fact that one reason there are more and more families facing homelessness is because there is a massive shortage of homes which RTB plays a part of?
It's not often I'm speechless on here

I agree. I think it’s part of the reason we have a massive shortage of affordable homes. Another legacy of Margaret Thatcher but successive governments have done nothing to address this imbalance.

I moved into my home 2 years ago. Enquired when I moved in about the kitchen as it is very dated, was told i would be eligible for a new kitchen approximately 2025, as the kitchens and bathroom in my housing group have a 30 year life span. 😬

YANBU. It’s not fair at all and gives the impression that you can get on the housing ladder without working for it like everyone else who has to buy their first property at a much higher price for a smaller property.

Perhaps putting your efforts into creating a more equal society, helping put to right some of those societal ills, rather than working so hard to bolster an unfair system by putting yourself above others, would have led to a better outcome for you?