End of Right to Buy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...ntral-19208736

Re: End of Right to Buy.

a bit late in the day to stop that now it should never have been started in the first place....it wont help people get a council property because there is a lack of housing all over the country....

Re: End of Right to Buy.

Whatever the arguements there are for this, there is no doubt the system gets abused. If someone wants to buy their council house, they should have a number of conditions, such as having been resident for (maybe) ten years without incident and they pay full market value for the property - in other words the right to buy becomes first refusal.

Re: End of Right to Buy.

I couldn't agree more. I've always been dead set against it.

Re: End of Right to Buy.

It's a bit late now, I shouldn't think there are that many council owned properties left anyway, I though the Housing Associations took many over.
All the prime council held housing stock around here went first like the lovely little red brick built cottages near me which have huge gardens . One sold not long ago for £275,000.

Re: End of Right to Buy.

Same here Meg, there's some Beautiful Cottages in the Village here and all sold for a Song. At least the new Housing Assocation ones can't be sold. Lots of People want and need to Rent as they can't get a Mortage.

Re: End of Right to Buy.

For my part I believe that anything that reduces the size of and involvement of government has to be a good thing.

I can understand the need for subsidised housing immediately post war, likewise for subsidies in some manufacturing and other industrial activities.

But government has no place in running utilities or providing houses other than as a very short term measure at times of National emergency or when the genuinely dysfunctional families, and I don't include so called “Single Parent” families as being families in the true sense have no other recourse than a safety net being in place.

The RTB legislation brought in under the National Saviour government of Mrs Thatcher was a godsend.

Not only did it open up the opportunity for people who had been paying rent for decades to actually purchase their home, it also allowed rent that had been paid to become in effect a portion of the equity in the property because of a time related discount on the market value.

That, together with the release of assets that had been acquired by (usually Left Wing) governments in the past, and the selling of shares in industries that were rightly being returned into the private sector created yet more stakeholders, so further aided the dismantling of the malign influence of what were frequently actually communist supported, funded, and always inspired unions.

After all, if you hold a stake in a thing you don't usually do anything to damage it.

Right to buy? Don't stop it, if anything stop council or central government funded cheap housing.

I only wish we had a latter day Mrs Thatcher around today to dig us out of the mire because I really don't think that DC has the personality to do what should be done.


BTW --- if people find my Forum identity a bit of a pain my actual name is Dieter von König