Gordon Brown is set to usher in a new era of council housing by helping local authorities to buy repossessed and unsold properties. Cash and powers will be made available so that town halls can intervene in the housing market, The Times has learnt. The measures - which could be announced as soon as Tuesday - will encourage councils and housing associations to offer struggling borrowers financial help in return for a stake in their homes or outright ownership. The number of council homes has plummeted since 1981 from 6.1 million to 2.5 million. Hundreds of millions of pounds of extra cash earmarked for social housing could now be released early to buy up newly built properties. It is understood that town halls will also be encouraged to emulate Liverpool's local authority, which offers first-time buyers help with deposits in return for a small equity stake. Other options, including a stamp duty holiday, are being held back for further consideration
Gordon Brown is set to usher in a new era of council housing by helping local authorities to buy repossessed and unsold properties. Cash and powers will be made available so that town halls can intervene in the housing market, The Times has learnt.
The measures - which could be announced as soon as Tuesday - will encourage councils and housing associations to offer struggling borrowers financial help in return for a stake in their homes or outright ownership. The number of council homes has plummeted since 1981 from 6.1 million to 2.5 million. Hundreds of millions of pounds of extra cash earmarked for social housing could now be released early to buy up newly built properties.
It is understood that town halls will also be encouraged to emulate Liverpool's local authority, which offers first-time buyers help with deposits in return for a small equity stake. Other options, including a stamp duty holiday, are being held back for further consideration
Offer to take the property on at cost, not with profit. Then employ companies and builders directly on fixed price contracts to build homes for subsidized rent and build a lot of houses of the type needed in places where they are needed. Stop this rash of highly-proitable "executive housing", the large numbers of crappy flats for "buy-to-let".
build homes for people, for indidviduals and families on low incomes. keep to the Fen Causeway
The key IMHO is to keep the land in public ownership, or take it into public ownership.
Builder/developers may be brought in as partners. They would invest an agreed profit margin, and any costs would be met by investors of risk capital, possibly from a constantly recycling pool of development credits.
Once a project is finished, long term investment in "Unitised" rentals would refinance the development credits, and allow the developers to realise any profits from their share of "Units".
The result is essentially a "Not for Profit" (but also "Not for Loss" ...! ) Real Estate Investment Trust.
Such partnership-based financing wipes the floor with conventional funding because:
(a) such "Community Equity" (within a partnership framework as opposed to the conventional "Equity" in a Company that makes the Private Sector "Private") involves no debt repayment: if investors want to release their Capital, they find buyers for their Units;
(b) "unitised" rents are;
(i) "affordable" - so more certain to be paid, and hence lower risk;
(ii) index-linked - so a lower return may be paid than when the return is non index-linked and eroded by inflation. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
