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Originally Posted by Paul M
Buy the house off the council - the mortgage will probably be cheaper than the rent these days.
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Yep, that's what most people do when they scrape together a deposit (providing the area is reasonably nice to start with).
Trouble is that sometimes, unless most of the properties end up being privately owned in one estate, the council ends up wanting to demolish the whole area at some point in the future and start all over again with some new "vision".
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One of the other problems is that Johnny Two Jags Prescott in his infinitely fat wisdom saw fit to impose a cap on the right-to-buy discount. This cap has not risen along with inflation or with house price increases. The cap varies depending on the region and in this area it is still at the same old £22,500 cap as when it was introduced by Labour in the late 1990's (except in Scotland where no cap whatsoever was imposed). So, if say in 1999 when your council house was valued at £45,000 then, with your 60% discount, you were still laughing so nobody thought anything much of this new cap back then. Today however, when your house value has rocketed to £130,000 and the RTB cap has remained the same, then you are knackered. Its still cheaper than normal but not by much and not as cheap as rent for a long time. The RTB cap was introduced to stop the sapping up of council housing by proxy RTB purchasers in places like London for the sake of people making a fast buck (with the loss of badly needed affordable housing) but that simply has no bearing up here. They can't get rid of council houses fast enough because they are a financial burden to the councils.
The council up here don't want the burden of housing and all its maintenance problems. That's presumably why they set up these ALMO's. It is the first step in pushing them fully off in to private management companies and rid themselves of a problem that gives them so much public grief.