As many as 221,000 housing association tenants could exercise their right to buy if the Tory manifesto policy is implemented.
The figure comes from the National Housing Federation, which believes that this is the number of tenants who would be both eligible and able to afford to buy their homes.
Those eligible must have lived in their homes for three or more years before they can buy at a 35% discount.
The NHF says under the three-year rule, 850,000 are eligible.
Of those, it calculates that 221,000 households could afford to do so, based on a mortgage of three and a half times salary with a 5% deposit.
The NHF further calculates that this level of take-up would cost £11.6bn.
Comments (2)
Why!?!?!? So if I sack myself, go unemployed, get depressed, get housed by the council, milk it for three years, get un depressed, get a job, I can then buy my flat at a £120,000 discount, then sell it, use £60,000 deposit to buy a new home and £50,000 for a nice little buy to let investment and all because I didn’t work for a few years!
Work and save, get nothing, do nothing, get everything, brilliant plan
Election times are great, all of a sudden prospective MP’s have to pretend listen and have to be seen to reply, make comment or take action. Nothing ever happens but at least they stop being all aloof , high and mighty for a few weeks
I live in a village big enough to support 3 primary schools which is probably already enough of an indication of a pressure on affordable housing and local needs. Ours is a village that is effectively part of the posh peoples’ playground where a wooden shed by the sea can command twice the asking price of the average UK property. Our local development plan places greater emphasis on holiday home income generation than 106 local need provision (you can convert a barn to a holiday home for wealthy folk but you can’t turn it into a pair of starter homes.
Unfortunately for our sitting MP 10 acres of green belt development land supported for planning in 2013 by intense local needs has just started on groundwork and infra structure. That ought to be a good thing for him but it seems the local needs element of the development has (allegedly) already been sold off to a Housing Association making those homes unavailable to purchase by local young families. As yet the rumours are unsubstantiated but it seems the Housing association isn’t a local one and the properties will be used to house displaced families from other parts of the country. All this is great our village will have another 60 families competing for the limited seasonal, April to September, minimum wages jobs in theme park Devon.
Something is very, very broken in this country and the sadness is that not a thing can or will be done about it. What is worse is that those spewing out manifesto bunkum seem to be oblivious to any effect or repercussions their Baldrickesque cunning plans might have.