A Tory council has spent over £90m buying back flats it sold off in the 1980s and 1990s under Right to Buy, it has been claimed.
In a story close to today’s election, in the left-leaning Daily Mirror, the two case studies it cites are not exactly new, dating back four and six years respectively.
The council is Westminster, which was caught up in a notorious scandal in the 1980s when its leader, Dame Shirley Porter, was found to have sold off council homes to likely Tory voters.
According to the Mirror, the council has set up a charitable company called Westminster Community Homes which has spent £90.74m buying back 295 former council homes. It has paid an average price of £307,593 – in some cases, 22 times more than the properties were sold for.
Using Land Registry documents, the paper identifies one flat sold in 1987 to the tenant for £11,700, a discount at that time of £27,300. The same property was bought back by Westminster Community Homes in 2011 for £260,500.
Another property was bought back in 2009 for £327,000 after being sold to the tenant in 1987 for £19,110, a discount of £26,390.
The Conservatives have pledged to expand Right to Buy to social housing tenants.
Should the Tories form a government after today’s election, the Mirror says it is “unclear whether Westminster Community Homes will be forced to sell these properties off for a second time”.
Yup and all of these ****** idiots up today are going to end up doing the same thing. Nothing like being bitten twice huh
I can understand the sense it makes to our country though, sell everything for £1 and then buy it back a week later for £20.
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Hampshire County Council have done the same thing. However I do believe that if you buy a council house at a massive discount when selling, you should only be able to sell to people in the same situation. That would stop wealthy people buying up ex council/affordable houses meant for people on lower incomes and also keep that stock circulating enabling house ownership for more people. Horses for courses!
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Before going to the dark side and joining EA, I was a agency based mortgage broker for 10 years, you will be staggered by the amount of clients who were just about to exercise their right to buy that already had buy to lets running in their sisters,uncles or aunts names. Some even had them in their own names and not one council ever questioned it
And yes, in case you were going to ask, I snitched everyone of them up to their local council, thoroughly enjoyed it too
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