Tories unleash new 'right to buy' revolution for 1.3m housing association tenants
NEW measures designed to give more than a million more people the right to buy their own home are to be announced the Queen's Speech tomorrow.............http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/579822/David-Cameron-Right-to-buy-revolution-Tories-Conservatives-Queen-s-speech
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But its a fantastic opportunity, although the issue of relaxing planning laws and encouraging more brown field developments need to alongside to address the overall housing issue.
Right to buy is 1 positive step, but more is needed
Can you force a charity to sell off it's assets? Might be an interesting test case as two laws will collide at some point.
You talketh the nonsense, the right like to think that because it makes them feel better about what ever crap and badly thought through legislation they are about to land on the public.
Would be better to try and sort the housing marker out, which is meant to be a free market whithout government help being needed. When a government has to offer discounts of up to £103,000 to groups of people shows things are not working.
I suspect there are going to be many exceptions. I can't see HAs based in national parks or very rural areas being forced to part with their housing stock.
No reason why HAs in London & Manchester can't let their tenants buy and then build new homes with the proceeds.
Why shouldn't they be able to buy at a massive tax-payer funded discount as well?
This is going to be interesting.
Only if they can buy the land at a good price and they can afford to replace like for like which has not been happening. Selling socail housing off but not replacing as caused lots of problems
It was the Labour party that first proposed Right to Buy way back in its 1959 manifesto and it was the Labour party that introduced MIRAS in 1969 which kicked started the home ownership revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
Next.
Why won't politicians get it through their thick heads that offering massive subsidies should show how totally screwed the housing market is?
They could help fix the issue in a more sustainable manner by forcing developers to build and leading the charge through a council house building boom
That would risk undermining the value of existing housing stock. Oh, and developers are highly influential on the political class. Their business model of building fewest homes for highest prices will remain.
Either through legal challenges or by modifications of the law by future government.
Maybe if you are a private landlord you should have a word with your nearest Conservative MP
Logically and morally, there is no difference between forcing a housing association to sell at a loss and forcing a private landlord to sell at a loss.
But that is what the private market is about not social housing, and saying home ownership is at a 29 year altime low this policy does nothing to really help. And the government can bring this policy in but cannot force the banks to give mortgages out to these people and because of the affordabilty test very few will get a mortgage anyway. And the discount money to pay for the discounts for HA housing to be sold off is being paid for buy forcing more councils to sell thier housing off to cover the discount money for HA. So council housing being sold to fund the HA discounts makes no sense at all.
Are they just going to let it go, or will they present a legal challenge to the government arguing that this HA right-to-buy law is "discriminatory"?
It's just human nature.
It's logic...they've forced council landlords to sell off, they are about to force HA landlords to sell off...that only leaves the private landlords.
And assuming you actually pay tax I'm sure you approve of your taxes being used to subsidise the buying of those homes.
After all you surely aspire to help the aspiring to achieve their aspiration?
Houses are built on land which the government does not own.
Builders cannot be forced to build.
Where exactly would you like your builders to be forced to build?
Of course builders can be forced to build. Tax unused land, reduce value by removing planning permission from landbanked land. Use or or lose it. Make it impractical to hold it.
Here's a novel idea. The government (directly or through the council) could buy land (bear with me), obtain permission and build the houses itself!
We could also tackle BTL while we're at it
why must progressing always be seen as ownership of something i wonder.?
People can rent and be quite happy you know,if people want to buy let them go on the open market.
RTB has worked well in my town with about 1/3 of all property sold now private rentals result,three bed council property £420 a month three bed private rental £900+ a month with very little security of tenure and sky high housing benefit bills for the public.
Of course it's about fixing the problem!
Get prices down through adequate supply to meet demand, then people can buy a house and not have to resort to horrific taxpayer subsidy to buy in a market built on a house of cards. Those who do not want to buy will benefit from not having to pay rip-off rents to landlords looking for a quick buck
Utterly catastrophic bodges like help to buy and stuff like this are disastrous on the long term. If only we had governments that could actually think beyond the next election...
We don't need to relax planning laws. We have too few houses being built in the right places (where the infrastructure is suitable) and too many houses built in ridiculous locations.
Like my village. Roads are full, schools are full, utilities can barely cope - but let's keep building without expecting the precious property developers to pay for upgrades.
There's NIMBYism and there's refusal of permission for sensible reasons