Buying my family council house - help

Samsung_Note2

Lioness_Twinkletoes wrote: »

You are most likely referring to the Right to Buy scheme. Only tenants are able to purchase their council home under the Right to Buy.


Speak to your local Council; they'll have a dedicated team that can advise.

Well no not always...when i was planning on buying my late mothers Flat,the stipulation was i had to pay the rent for 12 calendar months and then obviously with her in agreement id be free to buy the place.

Technically not council but Housing association...but all the same.

Pixie5740

Since the OP no longer lives in the property (s)he cannot make a joint application with the person (mother) who actually has the right to buy.

dunroving

So, here's a thought.

Currently, if a Council tenant pays, for example, £80k for what is effectively a £160k house, then when they pass on, beneficiaries inherit the whole £160k (or less/more, depending on whether the Big Crash happens).

IF you are going to run a RTB scheme, why not have the fair market value of the house assessed, allow the renter to buy a proportional ownership (50%, if they pay £80k in the case of the above), and not pay rent any further? The new part-owner would also pay a proportional amount towards continued maintenance and upkeep, and on their death the house can be sold to an individual, or back to the Council; see below).

On sale, the family of the ex-Council renter, now owner, would inherit the proportional amount of the net sale proceeds. So, if the house sells for £200k net, they inherit £100k. If the Big Crash has happened and the house sells for net £100k, the family inherits £50k. And the Council takes the remainder of the sale proceeds.

Alternatively, on the owner's death, a fair market appraisal of the property can be done, and the Council reimburses the beneficiaries the £100k (or £50k, in the alternative scenarios above).

This seems a lot fairer to me. And I think we would then find far fewer Council tenants (and their families) interested in buying their Council rented property.

Norman_Castle

dunroving wrote: »

It's not a "right to inherit" programme, first of all. That's most pertinent to the motivations in this thread and another recent thread about not wanting to lose the family home, or some similar expression.

Paying rent is not the same as paying mortgage, so no, living as a Council tenant for 20 years doesn't mean you effectively paid for the house, any more than a private sector tenant, in fact the latter is likely to have paid far more in rent over a similar period.

Council tenants enjoy free maintenance (hedge-trimming, roof replacement, boiler replacement, solar panel fitting, etc.), often at a frequency that home "owners" (the bank actually owns most houses) envy and can't afford to do themselves - or have to literally do themselves.

The "right to inherit" is an abuse of the system. Hopefully the opportunists who aim for this are prevented wherever possible.


Rental payments do cover the costs of purchase and maintenance so effectively they are paying for the house whether social or private.


"Free" maintenance is funded through rental income or service charges so not free. If home owners put aside a set amount per month to fund maintenance they wouldn't consider it free. Apart from the money management renting is no different

dunroving

Norman_Castle wrote: »

The "right to inherit" is an abuse of the system. Hopefully the opportunists who aim for this are prevented wherever possible.


Rental payments do cover the costs of purchase and maintenance so effectively they are paying for the house whether social or private.


"Free" maintenance is funded through rental income or service charges so not free. If home owners put aside a set amount per month to fund maintenance they wouldn't consider it free. Apart from the money management renting is no different

Applying the traditional homeowner model (in which interest rates have fluctuated between 1% to over 15% over the years), I would doubt very much that the low rent traditionally paid for council houses covers the cost of servicing the debt to buy the house, plus all of the ongoing maintenance and service costs over the years. I recall our council rent being way below the mortgage for a similar property (recognizing that a mortgage also includes capital repayment), and certainly way below the cost of a mortgage plus ongoing house maintenance.

Council tenants also benefitted from stable housing costs, whereas especially in the 1980s, owners endured nightmarish fluctuations in the cost of their mortgage. I was there and experienced it. Plus I knew extended family who extracted the urine by receiving housing benefits for many years of supposed unemployment, and then buying their Council house!

I understand not all Council tenants are like my extended relatives, but this sense of entitlement strikes a nerve.

Re: The comment about covering the costs of private rental, I owned a BTL for 6 years and took a loss when I sold it. The rent barely paid the interest-only loan plus basic maintenance, and the repairs due to negligent tenants took care of the rest, and more.

Sorry, getting off track here but as a former beneficiary of subsidized social housing in my childhood, I think a lot of RTB is taking the you-know-what.

Norman_Castle

dunroving wrote: »

Applying the traditional homeowner model (in which interest rates have fluctuated between 1% to over 15% over the years), I would doubt very much that the low rent traditionally paid for council houses covers the cost of servicing the debt to buy the house, plus all of the ongoing maintenance and service costs over the years.

Council housing is self financing which includes all associated costs.
Councils have to keep housing revenue accounts showing expenditure. These are ring fenced and cannot be financed externally or used to fund other council expenditure.

Norman_Castle

dunroving wrote: »

Re: The comment about covering the costs of private rental, I owned a BTL for 6 years and took a loss when I sold it. The rent barely paid the interest-only loan plus basic maintenance, and the repairs due to negligent tenants took care of the rest, and more.

3/10 Must try harder.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3115091/Ex-maths-teachers-Britain-s-biggest-buy-let-couple-start-selling-1-000-strong-property-empire-bid-make-100m-profit.html

dunroving

Norman_Castle wrote: »

3/10 Must try harder.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3115091/Ex-maths-teachers-Britain-s-biggest-buy-let-couple-start-selling-1-000-strong-property-empire-bid-make-100m-profit.html

I knew I should have paid more attention in maths.

KxMx

dunroving wrote: »

I think the whole RTB scheme exposes a lot of the dysfunctionality of the UK housing scheme.

Putting aside the cynical idea that the purpose of RTB is to turn Labour voters into Tory voters (so, why did successive non-Conservative parties continue the scheme, in EW and Scotland?) ...

It's not a "right to inherit" programme, first of all. That's most pertinent to the motivations in this thread and another recent thread about not wanting to lose the family home, or some similar expression.

Paying rent is not the same as paying mortgage, so no, living as a Council tenant for 20 years doesn't mean you effectively paid for the house, any more than a private sector tenant, in fact the latter is likely to have paid far more in rent over a similar period.

Council tenants enjoy free maintenance (hedge-trimming, roof replacement, boiler replacement, solar panel fitting, etc.), often at a frequency that home "owners" (the bank actually owns most houses) envy and can't afford to do themselves - or have to literally do themselves.

Threads like this really annoy me. I grew up in a single-family council flat in the 1970s, 30 floors up (not dissimilar to Grenfell, etc.) and would never have dreamed to think I have any right to own the flat I grew up in. I already benefitted from subsidised housing whereas in another era, I'd probably have ended up in the poor house or in some squalid tenement. I've since raised myself up by the bootstraps and it ticks me off that my neighbour has a perfectly well-paid job, but paid only £30k for the same sort of house I paid £180k for, and he runs two lovely new cars (I always buy used), etc. Just because his parents rented the house as Council tenants. Bonkers social logic.

Hedge trimming :rotfl: I don't think so, gardens including fences are tenants responsibility here.

There was a solar panel scheme a few years back, it ran out of funding and not many ended up getting it.

Yes we did get a new boiler approx 5 years ago, but only because the 1970s one failed a safety test and was condemned. The Council at the time was doing a heating upgrade so we got both jobs done at once, previously no central heating upstairs.

I would also like to have a bathroom window that opens, but we are still waiting on the landlord to fix, dating back to November 2017. Moisture is not a problem because of the extractor fan, temperature is now as room gets full sun until 2pm, we cannot shower in the mornings any more etc.

In that 7 months we could have saved up and got it fixed ourselves, but as renters this is not allowed.

Would also like to point out we get no housing benefit and pay full rent. No car either!