It looks like it if latest reports are true. The 'great' idea coming out of Labour controlled Newham Council is setting up an investment vehicle to 'nationalise' or bring back into state ownership poor quality private rented properties.
The Olympic borough wants to make use of low borrowing rates to buy rented accommodation in the private sector and thereby benefit from a rising rental income and increases in capital values.
Part of the argument for this move would be to 'stabalise' the 35,000 home private rented sector in the borough which currently has a turnover rate of 60% compared with 5% in the private sector.
How can this be right? If landlords were criticised for crowding out first time buyers from being able to buy. The intervention of a council who can borrow at far lower rates than private buyers and landlords surely constitutes crowding out on a massive scale.
Maybe they should be concentrating their resources in prosecuting the slum landlords in their patch rather than trying to buy them out!
Landlord insurance - professional rates
They cannot build council houses so they have cottoned on to a nice little earner, ready built property bought at cheap costs by using the weight of their own laws to increase their housing stock. And the judiciary is with them all the way. if this is enacted, every other coouncil will jump on the bandwagon, so expect massive upheavals soon.
ReplyDeleteGood idea! Newham buying up local housing. But harsh to blame rogue landlord for such a policy.
ReplyDeleteAs for the comment about Newham being a transit camp, this is actually good news, because it shows residents are moving out of from deprived area to better parts. The area has not much going for it.