We had a letter from our housing association today telling us that we now have the right to buy our house, or a part of it, under a scheme called Social Homebuy.
Our first reaction was “Why would we want to buy this place – it is far too likely to fall down before the mortage would be paid off?” and our second reaction was “Oh bollocks. Now not only will there be not enough council houses but there won’t be enough HA houses either.”
By the end of my time on the local council I was reluctantly and marginally in favour of encouraging housing associations to build new places instead of having the council build them largely because there was no right to buy and therefore any new social housing stock would not get gradually lost, but now that doesn’t apply.
Mind you, I can’t see this scheme causing too many places to go into the private sector. Apparently the maximum discount is from £9,000 to £16,000. With 3-bedroomed houses here not getting below £150,000 that discount does not make the price irresistable.
How this is supposed to ease the current housing shortage I do not know.
Hi, the whole basis of Social Homebuy (Which is flopping!) Is actually to generate the cash required to build new Social Housing. Under the old RTB rules only a tiny percentage of the sale price went back to the Council selling the property. A typical RTB Capital receipt was actually only 10% of the purchase price. Hence the deed of posponement. From the Tory Governments point of view it was actually a cash till.
Whereas this new system will probably never work because of the requirement to pay Stamp Duty from day one – But if you are under that limit. Do it, Buy 25% it may cost less than you think.
I am assuming that is not a totally objective opinion… 🙂