Councils have spent millions buying back homes they sold at a discount under Right-to-Buy laws to meet housing shortages.<\/p>\n
Islington council spent more than \u00a36.2m buying back homes it sold to people for less than \u00a31.3m, a Freedom of Information request reveals.<\/p>\n
Housing charities blame a lack of investment in social housing.<\/p>\n
The government has vowed to build more affordable houses and in February called the current market “broken”.<\/p>\n
The Right-to-Buy policy was introduced by the Conservatives in the 1980s, allowing council house tenants to buy their homes at a discount.<\/p>\n
BBC News looked at local authority areas where waiting lists rose for four consecutive years since 2011 and chose 10 at random.<\/p>\n
One property in Islington in north London was sold for \u00a317,600 in 2004 (at a discount of \u00a326,400), and was bought back by the authority for \u00a3176,750 some 11 years later.<\/p>\n
House prices there rose by 135% over that period, according to Rightmove.<\/p>\n
Get the data here<\/p>\n
Have right-to-buy homes been replaced?<\/p>\n
Iona Bain, founder of the Young Money Blog, said: “The unfairness is accentuated by the fact that someone who could take advantage of Right to Buy has not only benefitted from living rent-free for 20 to 30 years but now can pocket inflated profits by selling at a time when councils are desperate for homes.<\/p>\n
“They have lucked out from an extraordinary period of house price rises, unprecedented pressure on the housing system and major flaws in how this scheme was devised.<\/p>\n
“If I was a young private renter struggling to pay my bills, let alone save for a deposit on my first home, I would be very angry.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Councils have spent millions buying back homes they sold at a discount under Right-to-Buy laws to meet housing shortages. Islington council spent more than £6.2m buying back homes it sold to people for less than £1.3m, a Freedom of Information request reveals. Housing charities blame a lack of investment in social housing. The government has vowed to build more affordable houses and in February called the current market “broken”. The Right-to-Buy policy was introduced by the Conservatives in the 1980s, allowing council house tenants to buy their homes at a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6480,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6478\/revisions\/6480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}