I don’t know if anyone spotted the paragraph below lurking towards the end of this news item on the BBC site:
To help potential buyers, tenants of social housing are likely to get the right to buy their home – a hallmark of the Thatcher government in the 1980s – for as little as half the market price.
This is the issue discussed in the government report on page 26 onwards (you can read a summary of all the points on Nearly Legal here).
The words ‘social landlords’ presumably means housing associations. Which worries me. As does the intention to revive Mrs Thatchers right to buy. This resulted in a massive reduction in social housing stock which was never replaced.
I don’t know what the housing associations think about the prospect of being forced to sell off their housing stock at up to 70% discount (in some cases). How will this affect their general viability?
And even if the sale money IS going to be used to build new houses (and can we be sure of that?), why does the property need to be sold off at such a huge discount? Is it fair on the rest of us to give social tenants such a big windfall? No doubt many of them will then flog it on at a profit (when the rules allow).
From a brief reading of the government report it looks as if a large chunk of the sale price will still go to the treasury, which makes me wonder if this is not just a disguised selling off of the national assets to raise money.
What do you think?
Yes indeedy. I noted also on Nearly Legal, in Joeh’s comments where he highlighted Page 27 paragraph 64 where it states expected receipts will provide a sufficient contribution to the cost of replacement homes”.
So far the trumpeting is about replacing each home sold with a new one but that quote makes it clear that they know there wont be enough from a 50% discounted sale price to build a new one so where is the extra money coming from?
In an article I tweeted out about 2 months back the head of a council in I think Bury St Edmunds pointed out that a discounted sale on a 3 bed property in their area would leave £16,000 to build a new one.
The strategy concentrates on home ownership and very little for private sector tenants and landlord
And as people continue to pick over the bones of the strategy I read an interesting article in the GUardian here http://bit.ly/uT1U5h where the author picks up the fact that of the money made in RTB a chunk will still be going back to central governemnt but they dont say how much