right to buy housing association tenants

leveller2911

lighting_up_the_chalice wrote: »

HA's, who are in the business of renting properties, not selling them, do not tout for potential buyers among their tenants. If your mum got such a letter, it would be because she applied for RTB.

Some HA including Sanctuary Hereward are happy to sell some of their stock and do contact tenants. The houses tend to be over 20 years old and have no mortgages so they are raising funds by selling them at full market value and using the money to invest in new properties.

A 3 bed semi down here built around 93 would have a build cost of around £50k , built on land donated by the local Authorities and would now sell for around £195k+ ........

lighting_up_the_chalice

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

This is just nonsense. The LA for no reason is paying large sums of money to people who buy houses but ONLY if they buy them from HAs. Why? Why not pay people to buy privately built houses, if all you want to do is increase the housing stock and don't care about the social housing stock? if people can afford to buy their HA homes if given money they can afford to buy new build homes from developers if given the same sums of money. And if people can afford to buy new homes, developers will build them.

Developers and individuals selling properties do so with a profit motive. They have shareholders and foreign holidays to pay for. HA's are charitable and in the business of building and renting homes for a social purpose.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

Not that this should happen...it's patently absurd for the government to randomly given certain people thousands of pounds for no good reason. Although of course, the government won't give it...they will force local authorities to give it, and cut that money from their other budgetary needs.

If it injects money, both public and private, into the house building sector, wouldn't that be a good thing?

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

If you're going to say that new build homes cost more than HA homes, yeah, they probably do..which is why HA associations would not, in practice, be able to replace their existing stock simply on the proceeds of selling the old.

New builds will cost more to buy, but that allows for profit. The build costs would be easily covered with the sale proceeds of older stock. The biggest cost with house-building is usually the land.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

This whole farago is just a nonsensical scheme to promise free money to selected people who wouldn't have voted Tory otherwise. Judging from the comments here, it worked already. The scheme will of course never be implemented.

Of course it won't. Same as it wasn't in every other manifesto the Tories have promised it.

lighting_up_the_chalice

leveller2911 wrote: »

Some HA including Sanctuary Hereward are happy to sell some of their stock and do contact tenants. The houses tend to be over 20 years old and have no mortgages so they are raising funds by selling them at full market value and using the money to invest in new properties.

A 3 bed semi down here built around 93 would have a build cost of around £50k , built on land donated by the local Authorities and would now sell for around £195k+ ........

If they needed that capitol, most HA's would borrow against the value of their housing stock and keep the rental revenue.

Marie2015

lighting_up_the_chalice wrote: »

Of course it won't. Same as it wasn't in every other manifesto the Tories have promised it.

Any other time they promised it in their manifesto they didn't get in power. It wasn't in the 2010 manifesto. Pretty difficult to push anything through if they haven't been in power for almost 20 years!!

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

lighting_up_the_chalice wrote: »

If it injects money, both public and private, into the house building sector, wouldn't that be a good thing?

Injecting public money into the house building sector with the end result that that public money ends up in the private hands of a selected few? No, it's not a good thing. Can you please try and explain why you think this public money, if you are earmarking it for this purpose, couldn't be given to ANYONE who wants to buy a house as a deposit, thereby stimulating new build (as any injection of cash into the market will stimulate demand and therefore supply). This would also lead to private money being brought in and could be done on a much more equitable basis. I don't for a moment recommend or endorse this as a policy but it is much fairer than one that for some bizarre reason concentrates on Housing Associations. Of course the best thing would be for public money simply to be used to build council housing which would remain a public asset.

lighting_up_the_chalice

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

Injecting public money into the house building sector with the end result that that public money ends up in the private hands of a selected few? No, it's not a good thing. Can you please try and explain why you think this public money, if you are earmarking it for this purpose, couldn't be given to ANYONE who wants to buy a house as a deposit, thereby stimulating new build (as any injection of cash into the market will stimulate demand and therefore supply). This would also lead to private money being brought in and could be done on a much more equitable basis. I don't for a moment recommend or endorse this as a policy but it is much fairer than one that for some bizarre reason concentrates on Housing Associations. Of course the best thing would be for public money simply to be used to build council housing which would remain a public asset.

If it's going to be given to ANYONE, it would have to be a standardised amount, which would just inflate existing house prices by that standardised amount as everyone would have that much more to spend. I'm not sure if an across the board rise in house prices would provide much of a solution to the current house price bubble.

However, if that money is targeted at HA's, without shareholders to butter up, and matched by the purchaser, that would be a greater sum of money available for house-building without the inflationary impact on land costs which would result from your scheme.

For the record, I don't agree with it and I don't think it will happen. But I can also see that isn't as bad an idea as some seem to suggest.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

lighting_up_the_chalice wrote: »

If it's going to be given to ANYONE, it would have to be a standardised amount, which would just inflate existing house prices by that standardised amount as everyone would have that much more to spend. I'm not sure if an across the board rise in house prices would provide much of a solution to the current house price bubble.

However, if that money is targeted at HA's, without shareholders to butter up, and matched by the purchaser, that would be a greater sum of money available for house-building without the inflationary impact on land costs which would result from your scheme.

For the record, I don't agree with it and I don't think it will happen. But I can also see that isn't as bad an idea as some seem to suggest.

The HAs will have to buy land to build their new houses on - why do you think that won't have an inflationary impact on land costs? Remember they HAVE to buy the land and they have to buy it now...they can't hold on to the money and wait for prices to fall.

lighting_up_the_chalice

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

The HAs will have to buy land to build their new houses on - why do you think that won't have an inflationary impact on land costs? Remember they HAVE to buy the land and they have to buy it now...they can't hold on to the money and wait for prices to fall.

YOUR.
ANYONE (ie everyone) is given a set sum towards a house purchase. Let's put a £50k value on that, just for the sake of argument. So, you have the same people chasing the same houses, all with the same extra £50k available. Logic dictates that all house prices will simply increase by £50k to take that available cash into account. As a result, land prices will also rise by a similar proportion as the value of the finished house has increased by £50k but the build/materials cost has remained the same. Result? The taxpayer funds huge land price increases and rises in shareholder dividends for the large builders while the impact on the housing crisis is, at best, nil. At worst, rents increase to reflect the additional property values, HB costs go through the roof, taxes have to increase to fund it and we're all worse off.

GOVERNMENT idea.
HA's sell their property to tenants for full market value, the cost made up of the tenants contribution and the refund of any discount from central government. No inflationary impact on house prices or land values there. The HA then uses those receipts to fund further house building. I think we can all accept that house building needs to increase to meet demand, so any inflationary impact on land values as a result of HAs purchasing plots will be offset by the reduction in house prices cause by better matching supply to demand.

I don't like it, I don't agree with it.... But that doesn't make it a bad idea.

t0rt0ise

lighting_up_the_chalice wrote: »

HA's, who are in the business of renting properties, not selling them, do not tout for potential buyers among their tenants. If your mum got such a letter, it would be because she applied for RTB.

Rubbish. I had such a letter a little while ago. It was quite speedily followed up with another saying that actually the houses in our particular street weren't in the RTA scheme as yet but the rest of the tenants who it did apply to got the letters too. I don't remember the details of the letter but I certainly didn't apply for it.

harrys_dad

This is the latest situation

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/20/lords-vote-tory-plans-extend-right-to-buy-housing-association-tenants-doubt