Council house right to buy questions

[Deleted User]

We are entitled to the maximum discount to buy our council house. Currently valued around £166,500 and we should get a discount of £86,400. We could now afford a mortgage so we could buy. Although I understand there are financial penalties if you sell in the first 5 years I wondered about the following questions:
Would we be allowed to rent out our house in the first 5 years?
Are council houses usually a good step onto the property ladder?
Does the discount amount count as your deposit, or would we still need to put down a deposit of say 5%?
If we bought, could we immediately or within the first year allow the council to take the house back to use under their Private Tenancy Leasing Scheme (where they take the house for 4 years and guarantee to pay you the market rent value in return for them letting it to someone off the housing register. The guarantee to return it in the condition you handed it over to them, so there is some peace of mind?
Do you have to have a special type of mortgage? 
Thanks in advance for your help!

Cakeguts

Where would you live if you did all these things?

[Deleted User]

Deleted_User said:

We are entitled to the maximum discount to buy our council house. Currently valued around £166,500 and we should get a discount of £86,400. We could now afford a mortgage so we could buy. Although I understand there are financial penalties if you sell in the first 5 years I wondered about the following questions:
Would we be allowed to rent out our house in the first 5 years?
Are council houses usually a good step onto the property ladder?
Does the discount amount count as your deposit, or would we still need to put down a deposit of say 5%?
If we bought, could we immediately or within the first year allow the council to take the house back to use under their Private Tenancy Leasing Scheme (where they take the house for 4 years and guarantee to pay you the market rent value in return for them letting it to someone off the housing register. The guarantee to return it in the condition you handed it over to them, so there is some peace of mind?
Do you have to have a special type of mortgage? 
Thanks in advance for your help!

There’s nothing on the RTB side that will prevent you from letting the property. It’s the mortgage that will be the problem. RTB mortgages are residential not buy-to-let and are intended to be used for you to buy somewhere to live not to let. It is highly unlikely that any RTB mortgage will give consent to let from the get go. 

thesouthernnortherner

On the deposit side, some lenders will allow you to use your discount but not all, it's a case of shopping around or using a broker. You will need around £1.5k for solicitors' fees. You may also want to get a professional survey done, as any major repairs you would need to pay for once you have bought it.

oz0707

I'd say buying a council house with maximum discount is probably the second best way of entering the property market in the UK. Short of being gifted a place. 

Brewerspride

The OP posted in June this year.

[Deleted User]

And your point?? @Edenbridge - I posted this at the beginning of our RTB process in June and are now homeowners! I didn't think I had to respond to every comment once I ask question? And for your info I have been online since....and seen some of the comments which were completely unnecessary and therefore hadn't bothered making any further posts. 

So, for your information...we used a broker, were able to use our discount as the deposit, and got very nice deal for only just a fraction more than our rent..thank you very much! Our lender will allow us to rent out the property, if we so desire, for a small yearly fee. If we did it would be with a view to privately renting somewhere in another area. Our local council have already told us that they would happily use the property on their private sector leasing scheme where they guarantee rental income whether the property is occupied or not. Whether we choose to do that in the future is quite frankly no-one else's business and apologies for asking questions about the possibility of what we could or couldn't do!!

It's a shame that forum"s like this are clearly not non-judgmental spaces that novices on subjects can freely ask questions and expect civil responses. With the very first response to my post being what it was .....is it any wonder that after seeing that I haven't bothered to respond?? And won't bother using the forums on here again and be subjected to unwarranted comments. If you're going to use a space like this...do it to support, inform and assist people, not to judge!!


 

diggingdude

Tbf if you want to use a free forum you have to expect responses from all sides? The system has worked for you so congratulations. You also have to accept that for some people what you were proposing symbolises everything that is wrong with right to buy and it annoys them. If you want impartial advice where you won't be offended, my suggestion would be to pay for legal advice

[Deleted User]

@diggingdude And that's where there's issues because on a forum like this no-one else knows all the facts....'You also have to accept that for some people what you were proposing symbolises everything that is wrong with right to buy and it annoys them.' The ASBO team at the council were the ones who suggested to us that we buy the house as we'd been tenants for 30 years (the council had moved a family in who ended up with 13 people living in a 3 bed house, doing drugs and other illegal activities and because there were children said that no judge would evict them! Because the system is that broken!!) and then rent it back to the council for homeless individuals to be housed under their PSL scheme so we could move to a better area where we could live in peace!! Exchanging to another area as a council tenant wasn't an option as all the local estates are as bad as one another with ASB. I don't think wanting to move somewhere and being able to live in our home in peace is too much to ask, and if the only way to do that was to buy our house and rent it out, so be it-esp given the council were the ones who suggested it!!

jackieblack

Which is fair enough, but if you only give half the information then that’s all people have to go on 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Deleted User]

Perhaps people should just be less judgmental and be kinder. I don't ask for opinions, and I didn't think that's what forums like this were for. Just information, advice and support which is what I've given others in the past.