Sadiq Khan, a labour mayoral candidate for London said the bill “is going to be catastrophic for hundreds of thousands of people who will see rents and house prices rise and a steep decline in the number of affordable properties.” Khan is pushing his amendment that would demand that all homes sold under Right to Buy would first have to have a replacement home built nearby, before they could be sold in order to prevent the hollowing out of boroughs and the forced sale of council homes.
In an attempt to prevent the shortage of social housing, several councils across Wales such as Swansea and Carmarthenshire are exercising the option to suspend the Thatcherian Right to Buy scheme. Flintshire County Council also opted to suspend Right to Buy, claiming it had lost 822 homes to the scheme since it started in 1996.
It is not all doom and gloom for the UK’s property market as several cities attempt to launch affordable housing targets designed to curb the steep increase in housing prices. In Grantham, more than £3 million pounds will be spent on affordable housing. Similarly, in Plymouth, 19 new affordable homes are to be constructed. These pilot initiatives ensure that removal companies such as Movago are kept on their feet
Investors are now hoping that Build to Rent will ease the crisis for the UK’s so-called “generation rent” as housing has become inaccessible to most young people. Demographics, scarcity of housing and lifestyle decisions are creating a need for more rented homes. According to the British Property Federation “over half (51%) of private renters are under 35 years of age and 54% have no dependents, and so are unlikely to get social housing. Build to Rent would target the mainstream market and deliver affordable homes for key workers and other important groups that are critical to their local economies.
