The 'Right to Buy' for tenants of local authorities was introduced by the Housing Act 1980 and has led to the sale of two million council homes to sitting tenants. Following a significant reduction in the level of sales the government launched a 'reinvigorated' scheme in 2012 with higher discounts.
This briefing paper considers the effects and implications of the 'reinvigorated right to buy' and provides an update as at October 2015.
It includes sections on:
My conclusions are that:
"Despite the government’s protestations that the homes sold during the first year of the re-invigorated ‘right to buy’ have now been replaced and that it could be expected that it would take three years to replace homes that are sold; most people in the sector now doubt that one-for-one replacement will actually be achieved."
Furthermore, the evidence from research that has been carried out into the effects of ‘right to buy’ in local authorities is that it is not necessarily succeeding in its declared objective of increasing home ownership. This is because many of the homes sold are ultimately re-sold into the private rented sector. It occurs to me that if a government was really serious about extending home ownership its focus should be on bringing about a significant redistribution of income and wealth in favour of working people thus increasing significantly the number of people who could afford to sustain home-ownership."
Your free copy can be downloaded from HERE