Diritto di acquistare in Inghilterra “crisi abitativa alimentata e costa ai contribuenti £ 200 miliardi”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/03/right-to-buy-england-fuelled-housing-crisis-cost-taxpayers-common-weath-report
di Rewindcasette
12 commenti
The right to buy group on Facebook makes me laugh. These people feel like they’ve been majorly wronged because they now can’t save 70% off a house. They seriously think they’re entitled to a discounted house because they’ve spent their life being subsidised by the government and the council.
Try getting a job and buying one full price like the majority of the country has to.
It’ll go down in history as one of the worst policies that the government has implemented.
But hey, it won them some voters. So that’s all right.
In 1980 the government owned 32% of houses. Now they own 16%.
The UK housing stock is worth about £9.2 trillion so the 16% of it they have up would be worth today £1.4 trillion or about half the national debt.
Now granted maybe this is an overestimate because maybe the houses they owned were on the the lower end of the market, but even the article estimates the right to buy houses alone would be worth “£430bn after taking account of inflation and the surge in property prices since 1980.”
Right to buy was abolished here in Cymru several years ago. Probably for the best as, if I recall correctly, these houses were sold for way under their actual value and most will end up in the hands of private landlords eventually.
I must admit it was a bit annoying as my mum’s council house is nice and she’d saved for a deposit to buy it as she’d lived in it for nigh on 10 years, then RTB was abolished just before she had enough. Again probably for the best though.
It was a real shame to have sold housing stock that could have provided affordable rent for the poorest.
It would have been better to have built more council housing rather than allowing it to be sold.
It would have left permanent housing that could have been reused and provided a necessary safety net for those who needed it.
Right to buy was never the issue. The issue was the local councils never used the money raised to build more houses. Absolutely nothing wrong with buying the house you’ve lived in for years. The government should have charged actual market value and then reinvested the money into building new houses, that was the issue.
I’d be interested to see how this compares in effect to the buy to let scheme instead
Especially as right to buy mainly benefits normal homeowners whereas the other benefits rich landlords…. I can’t imagine why the focus would be on one and not the other.
The house was sold to the person living in it, who if they hadn’t purchased it would still have been living in it. So it made no difference.
The issue is they didn’t take the money from the sale and build more homes. It’s the lack of home building and the increase in population that has caused the crisis.
All of Thatchers wrongs are now being highlighted in many of the huge social & political issues we have today.
Selling – almost giving away – national assets to private ownership, we’re seeing them run into the ground, saddled with debt & rotten service.. though with great PR & marketing: smoke & mirrors.
Many industries that should never have been sold off.
By far, in my lifetime: Thatcher, is the worst thing to happen to Britain, by far.
No it didn’t.
The failure to allow councils the ability to use that money to build replacement council homes did.
You can really see the affect right to buy & other policies of the era had on housebuilding-
[https://www.centreforcities.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/HoP-Figure-01.svg](https://www.centreforcities.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/HoP-Figure-01.svg)
Ok, so that really isnt the reason we have a housing crisis. Guardian is blaming the wrong people, and they know it.
Right to buy without building new council houses does indeed reduce the available council housing stock.
But that is a tiny percentage of the Buy to Let market.
Low interest rates post financial crisis with minimal deposits turned the rental market on it’s head.
People could own second / third / fourth properties with interest only mortgages and reap huge rewards.
Making a landlord class that lived off their property income.
That’s why there are less houses for people to buy, it’s because people buy them (now via limited companies) to rent out, an income generating asset, with a good yield is worth spending more on.
That’s what is pushing up house prices.