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Government expects 3,000 Right to Buy sales in Midlands pilot
Ministers expect around 3,000 housing association homes to be sold through the Midlands Voluntary Right to Buy pilot, Inside Housing understands.
A regional trial of the policy to allow tenants to purchase their homes at a discount equivalent to that available to council tenants was launched earlier this month.
The Treasury has provided £200m to cover the discounts, which will average £66,667 if 3,000 homes are sold.
Right to Buy discounts are calculated based on how long the purchaser has been a tenant, the value of the home, whether it is a house or flat and how much the social landlord has spent on its upkeep.
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The Midlands pilot is being run as a ballot, with tenants given one month to apply for the opportunity to become a homeowner.
Successful entrants will then have until spring 2020 to complete their purchase, with the final number of homes sold dependent on the size of the discounts claimed.
A spokesperson for Places for People, which owns 9,000 homes in the pilot area across its group, said it expects around 30% of eligible tenants to enquire about the pilot and 9% to make a formal application.
A total of 98 individual providers, including those with the same parent organisation, are taking part in the pilot, which covers 70 Midlands local authorities.
An Inside Housing snap poll of participating landlords suggested that nearly a third of housing association homes in these areas could be exempt.
Respondents said they were including 39,597 homes in the pilot and excluding another 18,311.
Listen to our episode of The Housing Podcast ’The tale of the Right to Buy extension’
Housing associations offering the Right to Buy are able to choose which homes will be exempt from the scheme.
They may choose to exempt homes in rural areas where social housing is in particularly short supply or sheltered housing.
Units acquired through Section 106 agreements may also be exempt from the Right to Buy. Tenants in exempt homes may be able to "port" their discount to another property.
As part of the Social Housing Green Paper published earlier this month, the government scrapped a plan to force councils to sell off their most expensive homes, which was intended to fund the full Voluntary Right to Buy.
It is now not clear how the discounts would be paid for if the policy is eventually rolled out nationwide.
The government has said it will “assess the impact of the pilot before deciding on the next steps for this policy”, meaning it will not be extended nationwide until at least 2020.
