AIBU to totally disagree with 'the right to buy'?

Well said Seizetheday and I hope you have a long, happy tenancy.

Totally against right to buy. I live in a HA flat. I was lucky to only have 2 years wait. I know people who have been waiting 8 years for one. I was left in a crappy situation after my ex left us homeless and had taken nearly all the money out of my bank account. I ended up at 45 living with my elderly dad for 2 years while waiting to be re-homed. I was desperate for some space of my own after what I'd been through and for somewhere my DD could visit.
If everyone who is in a position to buy their council or HA property does that, then people who are in need of housing will be waiting forever. When I shuffle off, I want my flat to go to someone who really needs it.

For a couple of years after my father was demobbed in 1948 I lived with my parents in one of nine flats in a converted mansion that had once belonged to Kate Meyrick the "Nightclub Queen". Housing was scarce then, so the council had bought this cheap and converted it. The ceilings were high and the rooms big. Our downstairs neighbours had the ballroom for their sittingroom. It stood in its own grounds, which were heaven for us kids - a lawn big enough to play cricket on, a shrubbery with winding paths, trees to climb, a stone gazebo on a hill, the ruins of the bombed-out house next door (which was forbidden territory, but . . .) The drawbacks were trying to heat it, and the rent - £3 a week when the average council house rent was £1. It was a relief when a new estate was built on the edge of town and we could move to a cosy bungalow, but I did miss the freedom to run wild.

I met a woman a few years ago who lived in a small castle on the coast, she told me it was council owned. She showed me around, a great hall which they used as a living room a small kitchen, lots of passaages and draughts and in the tower were three bedrooms. Fabulous. I visited the day after halloween and her teenage kids were clearing up after a party which must have been the best party ever. The hall was dressed up with skeletons and pumpkins and lots of church candles and the whole slightly damp atmosphere due to a sea fret outside made it really creepy. I asked her if she would ever buy it and as she was a single parent she said it was only a dream.
A few years later I passed and it was privately owned with lots of security signs and cameras and keep out signs. I wonder who bought the only council castle I have ever seen. Wish I could have afforded it.

Why AIBU grannylynn?

yes, YABU !!

One of my dds is in the process of buying an ex council house. Dh had a nose on the Land registry and found that the previous owner had bought it in 1971, freehold, for just over £3k. It's on a street of similar, now largely ex council homes, and I would guess it was built in the 50s.
But 1971 was long before mass RTB was introduced, so presumably some councils were selling off at least some houses previously.
The same owner had lived in it since the purchase, and presumably for some time before that. The house has been very well cared for and has obviously been loved.
Current price is 100 times (!) what the former owner (it's a probate sale) paid.

I have often been in 2 minds about it. Friend of mine bought her council house when RTB was first introduced. She had lived there her whole life - nearly 40 years - and is still there with no intention of selling.

But there has been too much fraud with RTB - I have seen a TV prog. where property speculators made an 'arrangement' with a tenant to fiddle the system in order to be able to sell at a large profit later, and apparently it happens a lot.

When it was first introduced I don't suppose anyone ever imagined that council properties in certain areas would become so sought after and expensive.

I certainly think this govt. should put a stop to it, or at least restrict it severely, when there is such a shortage of social housing, and private renting in many areas is very expensive, with very little protection for tenants against bad landlords, or LLs who simply decide to sell at relatively short notice. After their 10 years in office, I can't think why Labour did not do it. They are only too happy to bang on about the evils of Thatcherism, but did not take this obvious step even when house prices began to soar to crazy levels.

I think I read somewhere that the annual. housing benefit bill is now around £23bn. To me it is a national scandal that so much of this vast sum of money goes into the pockets of private LLs, instead of into maintaining and increasing social housing stock. What is more, it makes absolutely no long term financial sense. (Except for the LLs who are making money, but of course an awful lot of MPs, including Labour ones, have buy to let properties.).

I don't think anyone blames people who bought their own council houses. Just blame the politicians for trying to buy votes while ignoring the need for more social housing.
You are absolutely right about the advantage of having mixed housing rather than huge council ghettos.
As I write - - on the radio - - 15k homeless "households" including an awful lot of children. No doubt vast numbers of single people are not counted in these figures.

exactly! elegran, I agree totally. That is why maybe its time to stop selling them off but not building huge new estates where people can be labelled. Smaller developments mixing in with large upmarket houses would be better, better for tenants social esteem and giving the area a healthy mix of population

ethel For the first 25 years of my life I lived in council houses. Near us lived a teacher, a nurse, a driving instructor and a lawyer who later became the town clerk of a Scottish city. There is so much prejudice about council tenants! If they are thought to be only for "the poor" (like workhouses) then no wonder anyone who doesn't feel that label fits them is not going to live there unless they are absolutely on their beam ends.

It is just like the prejudice against state schools - if they are shunned by all who can scrape up the money for a private school, then it is a self-fulfilling prejudice and they do become schools for "the poor" or houses for "the poor". Then those who are not "the poor" resent their taxes being spent that way.

From the point of someone who has bought a council house, my reasons were that I felt I was achieving something, bettering myself and doing it without a mans help. I really thought it was a good idea at the time and for me it has been, Ive never defaulted and will never default on the payments and I'm not in debt.

The other point that was important to me was the hundreds of council houses nearby that was full of no hopers, gardens full of old cars, kids running wild at night, drugs etc. Once a proportion of council houses are sold the standards go up, now council estates are quite nice, well kept places to live, I personally know of a lawyer and an accountant who live in an ex council house.
If we have council houses just for the poor we will go back to the ghetto days as before when it was not safe to walk the streets at night, no one can want that. Also it is a stigma to say you are from a council estate and why should you have that.
Homes for council tenants should be mixed in with others just like on private estates where we have private rented homes and no one need know who owns and who buys, that is the only way forward.

I have in the past been taunted with names like 'council scum' etc, my own MIL said she would not visit me in a council house as I had brought her son down, I have been told that council girls are well recognized with their tattoos and hair dyes etc. In reality I am none of these, I work hard and never do anything to be a disgrace.
so I think there must be another answer to the homes needed to put the poor and sick, not council estates

Elegran, where my sister lives her whole street, private and council and housing association, about 200 houses in terraces, was going to be bought up by the council.
All residents were going to be moved to different houses.
When the street had been modernised, the residents were going to be given the choice of moving back or staying where they were, either renting or buying.
It was part of inner city regeneration. Every other terrace was going to be knocked down and the remaining houses given a garden instead of a back yard.
The planning had taken five years, the finance was in place, much of it from EU grants. Then the Tory government got in and the scheme was stopped.
After another couple of years and taking the council to court for planning blight, as none of them could sell their houses, what actually happened was just as you said.
My sister had to put off having a hip replacement as she wouldn't have been able to get out of the house on even ground.

I see what you mean.

It does Eleothan - there's and estate I know of that is the classic little boxes made of ticky-tacky - terraces with flat roofs, built going on for 50 years ago to decant people out of London slums into the countryside (kinda). Must have looked lovely on the plans - lots of open space. Badly needs knocking down now and re-building to modern, energy efficient standards. Not a chance as so many have been bought. I see if I can find a link... Here you are. None for sale at the moment but one for rent.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-56270386.html

As far as I can remember, Right to Buy was as much about buying votes as it was about property ownership.

In my neck of the woods (Labour, with a large social housing contingent) we managed to elect a Tory back in the early 80s for the first (and thankfully the last) time ever.

Thatcher has a lot to answer for, one way and another..

I must make it difficult to do a complete replacement of the obsolete houses in a scheme if a proportion of them belong to individuals. All the dust of demolition and then all the building work, while people are coming and going to work and so on amid the mess.

I have never understood the decision to let tenants buy their council houses thus depleting housing stock.

As I understand it, council house tenants have maintenance and repairs undertaken for them and decorations too. Please correct me if I am wrong but that's what I believe.

If these tenants are then allowed to sell an updated house for market rates it is unfair to the council-tax payees who have subsidised the repairs etc., and of course most of all, it removes the hose from stock needed for others.

Gardenman I am no tax expert but were they liable for capital gains tax?

Because so many areas are a mix of council and ex-council housing the Right to Buy has brought about a situation whereby young people may struggle to buy a house which had been sold by the council to a previous tenant years ago, now on the market at full value (but still needing renovation), yet in the same road another family may be allocated an extensively renovated refurbished council house which they may then purchase in the future for 50% of its value.

That scenario does seem totally unfair - and how does one family get allocated a council house when another family can be on the waiting list for years and be pushed further and further down the list?
And no, it is not due to 'immigrants' taking the housing in this area!

I think the Right to buy was daylight robbery from the taxpayers on a massive scale. The council houses were built and paid for by the taxpayers and the Tories just sold them off as cheap as they could not even giving the money back to the councils. The Tories have always ripped the taxpayers off big time for years to feather their own next, they have sold off almost all that there is to sell always way below the true value. We the consumer are the ones who end up paying in the long-run. Not content with that George Osborne even done deals with multi national firms like Google and Costa Coffee so they would not have to pay their full tax bill. My sister in law brought her parents 4 bed council house for £38,000 after her dad died her mother moved into a granny flat in my son and daughter-in-laws house, they sold the council house for £275,000 to a property developer.

Duramjen this Trust has Trust in its title.

My mother was given the chance to buy her council house, many years ago now, probably when the scheme started. She would have got the maximum discount as she had been in it for many years. It was under £20,000. She expected us to lend her the money as " it will come to you when I die". We refused as we realised my H would be rung every week with jobs needing doing and also paying for any costly repairs would be down to us. She went into residential care for the last 7 years of her life and the house would have to be sold to pay fees. We would have lost it all. I do not agree with right to buy, it is responsible for the private rental market that exists today with people making fortunes.

Well we bought our council house not apologising for it either, we moved into a brand new house in 1977, lovely neighbours, children in our little square all grew up together.Then people decided to move away what did we get in there place people selling drugs, young mums with new boyfriends each week, fighting, houses broken into we stuck as long as we could and what they offered us for an exchange I can't even mention what we were offered. We lived in it 23years, so we put into buy it, 3 years after we bought it we were allowed to sell it, so we did we downsized into a lovely apartment the children had left anyway, and a few years later paid of our mortage that lovely little estate is now a no go area.

I have always been against this Maggie Thatcher idea. The posters on here explained the problems this piece of legislaton has done to ruin our social housing stock.

The people most needing social housing are those who could not afford to buy council housing.