Buying Grandparents Council House

Robert_Sterling_3

Interesting changes in the right to buy regulations.

Poppy9

Bossyboots wrote:

Then they won't get the benefit of the tenants' discount which will reduce the price substantially.

but the tennants are not buying the house their grandson is.

Bossyboots

Poppy9 wrote:

but the tennants are not buying the house their grandson is.

Ah,the penny has dropped and I now see what you were saying in your original post.

Dora_the_Explorer_5

Whoever pays for the house the council will only sell it to your grandparents. They can then give it to you if they want to and continue to live in it but given their age it's worth thinking about the possibility that either one, or both, may need residential care in the future. Unless you pay their residential home fees the council will pay them and put a charge on the house so it can get its money back when the house is sold, which will be when the last occupant can no longer live there - this will eat up any profit at a rate of knots.

asandwhen

The max discount you will get is around £36,000 I got this after living in my house for 4 years - so even if I was there for 50yrs I would have got the same as you reach your max.

WiseInvestor_2

Here's an article from the Conservative Party website:

'Socialist' Prescott is strangling Right to Buy

John Prescott is "strangling" the highly innovative right-to-buy policy, first introduced by the Conservatives two and a half decades ago, which has so far helped two million people join the home ownership ladder.

That was the angry claim made by Shadow Local Government and Communities Secretary Caroline Spelman to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1980 Housing Act - the flagship legislation which enabled council house tenants to buy their homes, a move which also enhanced the social mix of communities, and encouraged more people to take pride in the ownership of a property.

Mrs Spelman accused Labour's Deputy Prime Minister of forcing through a series of damaging changes during the last eight years, including slashing the maximum discount to just £16,000, raising minimum sale prices, and reducing eligibility for the scheme.

She said the Deputy Premier has been responsible for ensuring that maximum discounts have failed to keep pace with house price inflation, citing how in 1999 he replaced the maximum discount from £50,000 with nine regional discount limits - in some cases, as low as £22,000. Mr Prescott also increased the minimum sale price by raising the cost-floor. Then in 2003, Labour further reduced the maximum Right to Buy discount to £16,000 across 41 councils in London and the South. Mr Prescott's action means that while a typical discount was worth half the average value of a home in 1997, it has slipped back to one-third of the value today.

In 2004, the Prescott-driven Housing Act increased the initial qualification period for Right to Buy from three years to five years.

And while new tenants in housing associations are no longer being offered the right to buy their home, the Government's own new "Social Homebuy" scheme is voluntary, and housing associations do not have to offer it to their tenants.

Mrs Spelman protested: "Just as John Prescott's hostility to choice in education is motivated by old fashioned socialism, so are his attempts to strangle the Right to Buy and deny those in social housing the chance to own their home."

She declared: "The Right to Buy has been one of the most successful housing policies ever introduced, boosting home ownership, social mobility and helping create mixed communities. It is John Prescott's outdated values, not the Right to Buy, that deserve a place in the dustbin of history."