please empty your brain below

Great piece. Just to note some councils are now building their own housing again including London boroughs.
In today's money the house sold for

1980 £38k
1996 £112k
2001 £180k
2004 £237k
2007 £270k
2013 £220k
2016 £336k

While most of the increases in price will have little to do with the owners, improvements and upgrades over time can make comparisons difficult, but its fair to say that this house price has trebled in the last 20 years.

If receipts from council house sales had been inreinvested in new social housing, and there had been a mechanism to claw back some of the windfall profits when people first sold their home on then the policy could have been a very positive one for the UK housing market.
The problem with Thatcherism is you eventually run out of other people's state assets
Councils don't have to twist the arms of private developers to incorporate affordable/social housing into their projects. There are (locally determined, under Local Plans) requirements for certain percentages of new developments to be in these categories, dependent on the size of the development.

The problem is that 'affordable' is legally defined as 80% of market value (purchase or rent) which is not actually affordable.

Plus, developers are increasingly using Financial Viability Assessments (after the planning permissions are granted) to circumvent their obligations. See, eg, here.

The core of the problem in this country is not lack of housing, it is that there are simply too many people.

Over-population, and building huge new developments without putting in essential facililties in a timely manner is causing difficulties in provision of services that are not even considered when new developments are given the go-ahead. For example, in some areas now the wait for a cremation is 6-8 weeks after death.

S106 agreements and CILs that developers have to enter into in order to secure planning permission cover areas such as schools, GPs, sometimes community facilities or green spaces, but not hospices (largely non-statutorily funded anyway) and cremation facilities.
I remember going out to Harold Hill on Sunday mornings on a double deck RM using a Red Rover ticket available until 1pm.
While I can't remember the details, in at least Newcastle there were some very dodgy goings immediately after what Thatcher announced, with some poor but astute people making large amounts of money.
Whilst I agree with the idea of selling someone their council home after X years is a good idea, the refusing to let the council use the money to re-invest in new housing stock was a travesty.

(I'm not convinced about the 33% discount after just three years either)
Great piece. I'm sure if all the properties left empty most of the year (overseas investors and holiday lets) were used to house people, the problem would be solved overnight.
As others have said, selling council houses would have been a good idea if they had been replaced. In Singapore most of the population live in publicly-built but privately-owned flats. It's a sensible strategy when the market can't provide affordable housing (much better in my view than the current system where billions in housing benefit goes to private landlords without giving stability to the renters.)
It was interesting that governments of the 1980s, supposedly so opposed to the overbearing use of State powers, were so happy to restrict the choices of local authorities. After all, those local authorities were elected by the very "individuals" whose rights they professed to so keen to uphold.
Kind of interesting that recent owners of number 39 haven't stayed there very long.

Five years, three years, three years, six years, three years...

Buying and selling a house is a huge amount of work and costs a lot of money to only stay somewhere for three years.
As a council surveyor in the 1980's (in a different part of the country), a big problem was that the lawyers selling the houses conveniently ignored the surrounding infrastructure. Housing departments and their budgets were left reponsible for maintaining roads, footpaths, drainage, open spaces etc on estates where they no longer had any houses. I doubt whether this situation has yet been fully resolved.

Dr Beeching and Marple did something similar with the railways.
What housing policy since 1980 has done is made the availability/affordability crisis widespread across most classes, rather than limiting impact to a narrower slice of middle class owners (who are more likely to vote Tory).

Demand does not care about the balance of tenure types.
Thanks for the historical insight. The Conservatives remained in power from 1951 to 1964, so presumably these houses were built under Conservatives governments in the first place. Since 1979 governments have dogmatically abdicated their responsibilities in many policy areas to a market which fails so often. The NHS could well be next in line.
Number 61 just down the road (also a 2 bed) sold for 350,000 quid just under a year ago. Assume a 10 percent rise subsequently and I reckon you'd be looking at about 385,000 quid now.
As someone who grew up in the 60s to 80s on a large London council estate , one inherent unfairness of the policy at the time seemed to me, to be this: If you happened historically to have been allocated and were living in a nice semi or terraced council house then you could simply take steps to own it . If you happen to live in a less attractive flat on a large often run down estate (as we did) , you probably didn't want to own it in a million years but get out if you possibly could but of course stock wasn't being replaced so you were stuck unless you could move and buy privately (which all eventually fortunately did) . Life is often unfair, I know, but being "gifted" a substantial asset at a discount, for those who were , purely by chance in nicer council homes, regardless of need or effort, seemed unfair to those who were not and the lack of replacements and slow refurbishments of existing stock exacerbated that feeling at the time.

It now amazes me to see flats on my old council estate being privately sold which partly reflects I think the general lack of affordable housing in London.
Good piece.
I have worked in Social Housing. Before this concept of the Affordable Rent there was the Social Rent, at 60% of the rental market value. Some Housing Associations brought this rise in over a two year period too, to lessen the effect.
One thing about the Thatcher policy. It's aim was to destroy the Labour Voting habits of those in council housing estates. As such it should qualify for a prize as the biggest piece of gerry-mandering in political history.
For some reason, Tory governments hate local authorities (as witness the removal of local educational responsibility and vicious slashing of financial support); maybe it’s something to do with the obvious direct local connection between voters and politicians/policies, when national politics is far more remote and thus lets politicians act unaccountably. “Right to buy” and the refusal to allow reinvestment were foundations of the current financial crises by turning property predominantly into an asset class divorced from need.
Some people might think it appropriate that the first sale was in a road named after a rotten borough.
I don't think Sheffield was a rotten borough!










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