Right-to-buy sales have halved since last year

31 Aug 06
Right-to-buy sales have fallen by almost half, with councils selling just 26,655 homes last year down from 49,983 the year before.

01 September 2006

Right-to-buy sales have fallen by almost half, with councils selling just 26,655 homes last year — down from 49,983 the year before.

Discounts have been limited to £16,000 in London and parts of Southeast England since April 2004. During the final year before the cap was introduced, 69,577 tenants bought their homes — the highest number for more than a decade.

But lower discounts do not fully explain the dramatic decline in RTB sales over the past 12 months. While sales in London fell in 2005/06 from 10,691 to 4,042, there were also major reductions in Yorkshire and the Humber (from 9,545 to 4,922) and the Northwest (8,462 to 5,451).

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said the fall was also due to fewer good-quality homes being available and more properties being transferred to registered social landlords.

But Hal Pawson, a senior researcher at Heriot-Watt University, said the decline was more likely to have been caused by rising house prices in other parts of England and the fact that, since 2004, tenants have had to wait five years instead of two before they can sell their home.

'It's slowly squeezing the breath out of RTB,' he said. 'It's withering on the vine in a way that's caught people by surprise.'

The drop in sales comes as Labour's alternative home ownership scheme, Social Homebuy, is struggling to get off the ground. Just one council — Southwark — has agreed to pilot it so far.

PFsep2006

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