Estate agents up and down the country should be leaping around their offices in celebration, blue rosettes on their lapels, chanting '2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate? DC's the man for me!' Well, they ought to be, because David Cameron has just announced a new lease of life for Mrs Thatcher's original 'Right to Buy' programme. This programme originally enabled council house tenants to buy their homes at a substantial discount, but subsequent governments have reduced that discount.
By providing an incentive to purchase a council house, the idea is to free up much needed funds so that councils can build more homes. These, in their turn will free up the growing waiting list of people requiring social housing. Mr Cameron intends to fund 100,000 new homes for affordable rent and, at the same time, 200,000 new jobs. 'Right to Buy' once provided a discount from market value - for those living in their property - of up to 50%. His plan seems plausible, since 38% of social tenants do not require housing benefit and 800,000 of them are in full-time work. So that means that there will be plenty of ready buyers.
Mr Cameron also revealed that there was enough surplus government land in existence to build another hundred thousand new homes. The Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, adds that the government is considering a kind of 'Buy Now, Pay Later' arrangement whereby developers are given permission to build houses before paying the government a penny for the land, and then, once those houses are sold, writing out their cheque. It's the same kind of idea as buying a DFS sofa which, for this kind of industry, is quite innovative.
These Conservative Party Conference announcements could be exactly what's needed for an estate agency industry that's been wallowing in the doldrums, not least because there is little to celebrate with transaction levels at their lowest for the past decade while a huge amount of choice properties languish on the market - mainly because most of them are overpriced.
It could be, though, that on the basis of the enormously high fees other estate agents charge, they all vote Tory anyway.
By providing an incentive to purchase a council house, the idea is to free up much needed funds so that councils can build more homes. These, in their turn will free up the growing waiting list of people requiring social housing. Mr Cameron intends to fund 100,000 new homes for affordable rent and, at the same time, 200,000 new jobs. 'Right to Buy' once provided a discount from market value - for those living in their property - of up to 50%. His plan seems plausible, since 38% of social tenants do not require housing benefit and 800,000 of them are in full-time work. So that means that there will be plenty of ready buyers.
Mr Cameron also revealed that there was enough surplus government land in existence to build another hundred thousand new homes. The Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, adds that the government is considering a kind of 'Buy Now, Pay Later' arrangement whereby developers are given permission to build houses before paying the government a penny for the land, and then, once those houses are sold, writing out their cheque. It's the same kind of idea as buying a DFS sofa which, for this kind of industry, is quite innovative.
These Conservative Party Conference announcements could be exactly what's needed for an estate agency industry that's been wallowing in the doldrums, not least because there is little to celebrate with transaction levels at their lowest for the past decade while a huge amount of choice properties languish on the market - mainly because most of them are overpriced.
It could be, though, that on the basis of the enormously high fees other estate agents charge, they all vote Tory anyway.
About the Author:
Home buyers don't bother to tstroll into estate agency offices these days. 90% of them look for houses on the internet. eMoov, internet estate agents, cover the whole of the UK but save money by not having loads of premises which you otherwise end up paying for in high estate agents fees. eMoov are online estate agents and ten times cheaper than the High Street.
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