Buy council house

lincroft1710

There have been several threads where people have bought council flats or bought them off RTBers and have been faced with bills of several thousand pounds when council carry out necessary or improvement works.

You are classed as a secure tenant, buying the flat will hardly increase your security of tenure, it may even reduce it.

Fire_Fox

Buying a council flat is rarely a good idea, the service charges can be astronomical and they are more difficult to challenge than with a private freeholder.

mazz1953

Jewel wrote: »

I'm just absolutely bewildered that anyone can buy a council house. I think it's awful.

That's a sweeping statement. Would you care to explain?

Running_Horse

Sounds self explanatory to me.

Bryando

Thanks for replys.

I'm just curious. At the moment I don't pay service charges. Its a 4 in block. My Great Grandmother was in her house for 82 years. First tenant in the house and payed rent til she got shipped into nursing home. I would hate that, all that time etc.

Morglin

A few years ago, Northern Rock and a couple of building societies did used to grant mortgages for those on certain long term benefits - but, things have changed, with the financial crash, and I would imagine it will be well nigh impossible for anyone in your position to get a mortage now.

At the moment, if your income drops, you will get help with paying rent, thus enabling you to stay in your home - which you wouldn't get if you had a mortgage (or, not to the same level anyway). It would be pointless to try and take out any sort of mortgage protection, as the claim wouldn't be paid.

DLA can be reviewed at any time (whatever the award and whatever it's for) - if you lost it, even temporarily until an appeal was heard, it could also affect other benefits you may be on, and then you would be in real trouble if you had to meet a mortgage payment, whereas HB would kick in as soon as your claim was processed.

The transference of all claimants to ESA from IB, possibly during 2010-2013, is another factor you need to consider - although appeal success rates for all rejected claims by new claimants are still running about 70%, (the same as IB), tribunals are getting clogged with queues, because more people are appealing rejections, and it may be you would be without the same level of income, for at least a time, until things are sorted out.

It is widely anticipated, by many advisory groups, that most claimants will seamlessly change from IB to ESA, via paper reviews and not full blown medical examinations as first mooted (the system couldn't cope with the work involved in that) - but these things can get chaotic until all the teething problems are ironed out, which can take ages, in the case of the DWP!

At the moment, most maintenance and repairs are carried out, free of charge - and even fixing a boiler can cost a lot if you have to pay for it yourself.

With regards to having to go into a nursing home, if you owned the property, and lived alone, then all that would happen is that you may still need to go into a home for the care, and they would just insist the property is sold to pay the fees for however long the money lasted.

If you needed to ever just go into supported accomodation ( ie; sheltered), as a council tenant, this could and would be easily arranged by your landlords - not so easy (if possible at all), once you buy a place.

I would just sit tight, pay the rent and be secure in the knowledge, that as a 'vulnerable person' you will never be left homeless by your landlord/council.

Lin

Oldernotwiser

Bryando wrote: »

Thanks for replys.

I'm just curious. At the moment I don't pay service charges. Its a 4 in block. My Great Grandmother was in her house for 82 years. First tenant in the house and payed rent til she got shipped into nursing home. I would hate that, all that time etc.

But you're not actually paying the rent, which makes an enormous difference!

Morglin

I think he's talking about not paying service charges, not rent.

Being in reciept of DLA doesn't necessarily entitle anyone to not paying rent - that goes purely on household income, working or not.

Lin

BitterAndTwisted

This owning-property fetish is obviously unhealthy when people who can't even get or afford a mortgage are sucked into it. Having a secure home for the foreseeable future when in receipt of state benefits or even a low wage is a huge luxury few can dream of

tek-monkey

I blame Thatcher, stealing my milk at school was not her only fault it appears.