All Right To Buy's should be stopped

[lil-minx92]

right to buy should be scrapped. It basically amounts to gifting thousands of pounds from the public purse to a particular section of the community and is therefore discriminatory. Those who work hard will realistically never be awarded a council house and so will not be able to participate in the great cash give away.

Councils are selling (typical example) 80k houses for 40k. That's 40k from schools, health, roads etc. they then have to build or buy a replacement at full market value. If they build it will cost c.100k per unit. This will then be sold under RTB 3 years down the line for 67k and so the cycle goes on.

Madness!

[Happ Hazzard]

It's helped millions of people to get on the housing ladder that would have otherwise been unable to. The councils should be building more homes to replace the ones that were sold. That's the problem, not the RTB scheme itself.

[cassity]

It's helped millions of people to get on the housing ladder that would have otherwise been unable to. The councils should be building more homes to replace the ones that were sold. That's the problem, not the RTB scheme itself.

 

Excellent logic, build houses to replace houses you already posses in order to house people unable to posses.

[apelike]

Try to understand that there is no "great cash give away" as this is a discount on properties built several decades ago which maybe only cost £3,000 to build in the first place. The governments and taxpayer have seen a good return of profit in paid rents during that time.

 

However, the government can afford to spend your hard earned taxes on The Help To Buy scheme which has a budget of £2billion and is subsidising new mortgages by 20%.

 

You will also notice that not many new council homes have or are planned to be built over the next decade.

[cassity]

 

You will also notice that not many new council homes have or are planned to be built over the next decade.

 

Not to worry, there'll be plenty more to rent at inflated prices though once they're again sold off in 10 yrs to the private rental market.

[El Cid]

It's helped millions of people to get on the housing ladder that would have otherwise been unable to. The councils should be building more homes to replace the ones that were sold. That's the problem, not the RTB scheme itself.

 

Just give ALL 21 year olds £20,000, then it will help them all get on the housing ladder, not just a select few?

[I1L2T3]

It's helped millions of people to get on the housing ladder that would have otherwise been unable to. The councils should be building more homes to replace the ones that were sold. That's the problem, not the RTB scheme itself.

 

The original RTB expressly forbade councils from building replacements.

 

You also seem to hold contradictory views - on another thread you say people on benefits should have their benefits stopped for spending £4.50 on a dating site but now you're happy to bung the same people tens of thousands of a discount on a house.

 

---------- Post added 14-06-2015 at 16:19 ----------

 

Try to understand that there is no "great cash give away" as this is a discount on properties built several decades ago which maybe only cost £3,000 to build in the first place. The governments and taxpayer have seen a good return of profit in paid rents during that time.

 

However, the government can afford to spend your hard earned taxes on The Help To Buy scheme which has a budget of £2billion and is subsidising new mortgages by 20%.

 

You will also notice that not many new council homes have or are planned to be built over the next decade.

 

Doesn't work like that. The properties are capital assets with a current market value. Sell them cheap and that blows a hole in a balance sheet somewhere. That balance sheet has to be made good somehow and the taxpayer will most likely foot the bill.

[Happ Hazzard]

The original RTB expressly forbade councils from building replacements.

 

You also seem to hold contradictory views - on another thread you say people on benefits should have their benefits stopped for spending £4.50 on a dating site but now you're happy to bung the same people tens of thousands of a discount on a house.

Plenty of people live in council accomodation who are not on benefits. And plenty of people claim benefits but do not live in council accomodation.

 

If councils had wanted to build housing in the 80s they'd have done so. Since when do Labour councils care what the Tories tell them to do? The truth was, they didn't want anything to do with council housing, not sexy enough for them, and they were happy to have it taken off their hands so they didn't have the expense and workload of administering and maintaining so much of it.

[annbaker]

If councils had wanted to build housing in the 80s they'd have done so. Since when do Labour councils care what the Tories tell them to do? The truth was, they didn't want anything to do with council housing, not sexy enough for them, and they were happy to have it taken off their hands so they didn't have the expense and workload of administering and maintaining so much of it.

 

As has already been pointed put in the 1980s they weren't allowed to use the proceeds to build more council houses.

[Robbie Loving]

I wouldn't say there is a need to scrap altogether, however changes are needed.

 

The discounts are too high.

The penalties for selling them within the set guidlines are not sufficient/

The length of time penalties are applied are too low.

 

When you look at houses for sale, you see many many ex council houses. Who is the winner? It isn't the council or joe public. It is the person with this discount.

They sell for a good amount and then purchase a better house in a better area for themselves. Free deposit basically as lenders don't require a deposit on RTB properties.