radiofree.asia

Big Issue investigation finds councils losing £200k per house they’re buying back

A new investigation by the Big Issue has revealed that councils attempting to reverse Right to Buy schemes are losing over £200k per house.

The exclusive by Greg Barradale found that:

tenants are getting rich by selling their homes back to the councils they purchased them from at a discount.

In total, they found over 100 examples of ‘Yo-yo Homes’. These are social housing properties which tenants sold back to councils, only a few years after they bought them at a huge discount.

The councils had previously sold off half of these properties under Right to Buy.

Some tenants have made over £200,000 in profit from selling their home back to the council.

Right to Buy

Right to Buy allows council tenants to buy their homes at a discount. There are conditions:

You can apply to buy your council home if:

  • it’s your only or main home
  • it’s self-contained
  • you’re a secure tenant
  • you’ve had a public sector landlord (for example, a council, housing association or NHS trust) for 3 years – it does not have to be 3 years in a row.

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government introduced it in the 1980s. In total, councils sold 2 million houses to tenants at massively reduced prices.

As the Canary previously reported, Right to Buy has cost the government £200bn since 1980.

But it meant low-income people gained housing and stopped having to pay rent to the government.

The issue, though, was Thatcher using the scheme to deplete the country of its social housing stock. She failed to replace the houses sold at a discount.

The Big Issue also found that in the last five years, 53 councils in England sold 20,836 homes under Right to Buy.

A growing homelessness crisis

This comes whilst one in every 200 UK households is housed in temporary accommodation.

Recent figures from Shelter show that around 354,000 people are currently experiencing homelessness in England alone. This is an increase of 44,500 from last year. Importantly, though, these figures do not include anyone classed as ‘hidden homeless’. That means, anyone who is sofa-surfing, sleeping in cars or squats, or otherwise choosing to stay clear of homelessness charities. So in reality, the figure is even higher.

As the Canary previously reported:

In 2022–23, 18% of households in temporary accommodation in London were there for over 5 years.

What’s more, temporary accommodation is one of the most expensive forms of accommodation. The average rent in England costs £1,375 per calendar month. Temporary accommodation, however, is known to be far more expensive.

An analysis by the Centre for Homelessness Impact showed that from April 2023 to March 2024, local authorities reported that they spent £2.29bn on temporary accommodation. This is compared to £770 million on all other types of homelessness activity. Since 2010, spending on temporary accommodation has increased by 406%. Meanwhile, there was only an increase of 145% in the number of households experiencing homelessness over the same time frame.

Additionally, the number of children in temporary accommodation has surged in recent years. As of March this year, the total stood at 169,050. The bigger picture, though, is a 12% increase in households in temporary accommodation in the last year alone.

So councils need homes – to the point they are spending ridiculous amounts of money to buy properties back.

Huge losses for councils

The Big Issue investigation found that in Swindon, one tenant bought their council house under Right to Buy for £30,000 in 2015.

Records now show that the tenants sold the property back to the council in April 2021, for £150,000.

That’s five times the value the tenants sold it for. That means the tenant bagged £120,000 in profit.

The Big Issue found nearly 100 other examples of similar transactions.

Social media users have, quite rightly, pointed out that their monthly taxes are being used to buy back houses for extortionate prices.

Similarly, Hackney council sold one property for £95,050 in 2014. They then bought it back for £365,000 in 2021. That’s a loss of £269,950 in less than seven years.

Build new homes

Labour’s 2024 election manifesto committed to building 1.5m new homes within five years. Obviously, this would massively alleviate the housing crisis.

The plan included a focus on affordable housing, first-time buyers, and developing “new towns with modern infrastructure”.

Despite this, the number of new homes has fallen in Labour’s first year in office. However, in the last six months, planning applications to build more have risen.

According to the BBC: 

BBC Verify’s housing tracker shows 201,000 homes got their first Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) in the 12 months to June 2025, down 8% from the year before, continuing a fall that began under the Conservatives.

There are not enough homes in the UK, and councils are now scrambling while haemorrhaging money.

Everyone deserves access to a safe and secure home – whether it’s owned or rented. But Thatcher’s scheme, without parallel government investment in new, quality social housing, has left people at the mercy of the landlord class once again.

Featured image via Unsplash/Jay Clark

By HG

This post was originally published on Canary.