Landlord exodus prompts council to spend millions buying homes

Possibly Jo, but then will these ‘ new’ council houses then be available under RTB 🤔 at a heavy discount given they were purchased at the current market rate 😱💰🆘💰, until they end RTB, they are effectively filling up the bath 🛀 with the plug out.

It will be a miracle if this scheme is a success.

Simon - I don't know if the RTB rules have changed but back in 1987 when I did my RTB they weren't allowed to sell a property for less than it had cost them. I had a brand new Council house which wouldn't have got the full discount so I did an exchange and swapped it for a much older house that did get the full discount. As the original point of the RTB was to offload houses the Councils couldn't afford to maintain that made perfect sense.

"Does he not recognise" He's a public sector person. The answer is guaranteed that he does not recognise!

Plymouth and the surrounding area already has major housing crisis largely due to all the expansion of holiday lets in Devon and Cornwall. It would be totally pointless anyone deliberately moving into the area to join the queue.
Using the money to buy housing should be a solid investment unlike almost everything else Councils spend money on. Over time houses tend to go up in value. Of course that will partly be down to how the Council manages and maintains those properties and how they allocate them. While the vast majority of Social tenants and low income families are thoroughly decent people there are a few on the Council list who have been evicted for ASB. Placing one of them in a private sector residential area could be devastating for the neighbours and local property values. I had first hand experience of living next door to a 4 bedroom property leased by the Council for 9 years as temporary housing in the late 1990s. The majority of the tenants were very good neighbours but then we had the family from hell move in.

In Plymouth it should buy about 100 houses.
A tidy 2 bed flat is around £100K, 3 bed houses around £150K and 4/5 beds start at under £200K.
A lot will depend on their buying criteria. If they buy new builds they would get far fewer homes and would unbalance those estates as they already have a lot of Social Housing provision in the planning permission. Buying back ex Council housing would make sense as they already have maintenance programs for those areas. Buying centrally located properties would make general living costs as low as possible for the tenants as they wouldn't need to budget for a car or much public transport.

Personally I think they should build a lot of Social retirement units. It's much higher density, lends itself to smaller brownfield sites and frees up a lot of existing family size Social Housing which already has schools, shops and transport links. To acquire suitable sites, get planning permission and actually build it would take years.
Buying ready made houses is a very quick solution and those houses could be occupied in as little as 3 months.

Well they could definitely buy more flats than houses, as they are generally cheaper locally. Especially ex council and ex MOD properties (I sold one a couple of years back). Basic ex 2-3 bed council house now circa £180K locally. However they are talking about buying new builds as (supposedly) better insulated etc, not sure they will get much for their money there, unless the developers get desperate and sell at huge discount.

A sensible critique, but…… the local authorities and the failures that inhabit them just don’t care, it’s not their money, and only their problem until they go home at 3.00 pm 😱

Simon, These days they don't go home at 3.00. They are always 'working from home', of you can call what they do work...

FTBs haven't been buying traditional FTB properties for years. Pretty much since HTB incentivised them to buy a 3 or 4 bed semi as their starter home. It makes perfect sense to a FTB to avoid all the costs of at least 2 moves.
It does make selling a traditional FTB property much harder, especially as landlords have slowed down on buying them. If these are the properties Plymouth Council intend to buy it's a winner for everyone.

Imagine this gem…. The council’s buy houses from landlords that are selling up, at full market value 💰💰 but they were originally purchased under RTB at at huge discount 😂😂 …. From the same council 🛑🛑 talk about a right royal 🤴🏻 scam.

Simon - you have forgotten the vast amount of money people then spent on bringing their RTB up to some kind of decent standard. Most needed a full rewire, new kitchen, bathroom and windows. Some had old lead pipes and asbestos. Very few had much in the way of insulation. These houses were in a terrible state after years of neglect by the Councils.

What private landlord would be mad enough to rent their property to a Council?

Many years ago before I knew better I rented to a candidate put forward by a council NEVER AGAIN. Damage - stupidity - rent arrears and tenant had a complete inability to take responsibility for themselves and their behaviour. I suspect many Landlords with time and experience in the PRS will feel the same. Hence all the appeals we see from local councils desperately offering golden handshakes

I currently have 2 tenants via a Council scheme.
Both are single dads in their 50s.
Due to health issues both are in low paid seasonal jobs.
One of them has been my tenant for 3.5 years. The neighbours are very complimentary about him, we have settled into a routine with rent. Due to the half baked fortnightly pay days his employer insists on being completely incompatible with UC it's not always on the right day but it's usually in the right month. As tenants go he is very nice to deal with. He always reports maintenance issues approximately, will carry out minor repairs and just send me the receipt for materials so I can reimburse him, expects a rent increase every April and has so far had bigger ideas on that subject than I have.

The other one is newer and so far fine.

Not a chance would I rent to the council this side of a head trauma 😂 🤕

@ simon logan - I love the head trauma reference - adopted it and used it in another post 😂

Public sector organisations never talk to each other.

The original one had a 15 year old son living with him when he moved in and now has an older daughter living there. The flat feels like a properly loved home.
The newer one has a 12 year old son living with him full time and a younger son (about 8 or 9) frequently visiting. There are no gardens as both properties are flats. The interior decor is currently still being fine tuned. To go from homeless and sofa surfing to furnishing an unfurnished 2 bedroom flat on a UC budget takes time. Neither has pets, one of the leases bans them anyway.

However, I have 3 other UC families (who didn't come via Council schemes). They are all long term tenants and have arrived with very small children. One has had 2 more babies since moving in. One had 2 dogs for many years and another has just acquired 4 guinea pigs. All of them have a tendancy to redecorate from time to time. I do the big stuff like carpets, kitchens and bathrooms. They repaint and change the colour scheme to suit themselves. Both houses and that flat have gardens, all of which are currently very well kept. When the dogs were alive poop patrol could have been a bit more frequent ideally. Again all 3 properties feel like properly loved homes. Those tenants have been in situ since 2009, 2011 and 2016.