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A council is offering to buy homes from private landlords and allowing the existing tenants to stay in situ.

North Lanarkshire council in Scotland offers what it calls an open market purchase scheme in a bid to increase its stock of social housing. 

This allows private sellers to avoid estate agency fees, home reports, chains and multiple viewers.

The scheme, which has delivered nearly 600 additional council homes for social rent since April 2018, is supported by the Scottish Government. It enables the council to purchase properties that are for sale on the open market, many of which were former council houses previously purchased under the Right To Buy scheme.

The extension of this scheme, just announced by the council, enables the purchase of homes from private landlords to help prevent homelessness. 

In certain circumstances the council will also purchase properties from owners in blocks of flats, where all the other flats are already owned by the council and allow them to stay in their homes as tenants.

A council spokeswoman says: “This scheme has been really successful in recent years and by expanding it to private landlords, we hope to be able to attract additional sellers and provide more homes for council tenants to rent in our communities.

“The housing market has been difficult over the last few years with the pandemic and cost of living crisis affecting sellers, but we hope that by extending our scheme, we can purchase and deliver more homes in areas where there is demand for that type and size of property.

“There are lots of benefits to potential sellers that can make it much easier for them to sell their home. It also gives us the opportunity to bring empty properties back into use that have been lying empty or derelict.

“The opportunity for sellers in mixed tenure blocks of flats to sell to the council and stay in their home also allows us to progress with common refurbishment works which will benefit all tenants in the block.”