This estate is a good example—it was an unpopular place, the flats on this block. So when there was the “right to buy,” these flats were being sold and people were buying them and then losing money. Many bought them for £30,000 back in the 1980 and they would be repossessed by mortgage lenders after people defaulted on payments. Then these mortgage lenders would go into receivership and they would turn around and sell these properties at auctions—sometimes two flats for £15,000! And that is where you couldn’t refuse to buy it. It was cheaper to buy your flat, than to pay rent. If you were paying the full rent you got a better deal on a mortgage— it was actually a financial incentive rather than capitalism—and you saved money.
very former council housing tenant, renting the very flats that were intended to be shared by society and not privately owned.
My wife conducted the census last year on this estate and so a lot of the flats are full of young Eastern Europeans paying rent—four or five people in a flat—paying a landlord each upwards of £300, or whatever, and he is getting a lot of money. What happened is that a lot of speculators offered to help people to buy their flats if they would sell it to them—so a speculator would ask a tenant to put in for the “right to buy” and provide the money for it. So then it became part of an empire of landlords who had ex-council flats who in turn would give people say £10,000 to move. So this gave the buyers a 70% discount and the local resident was given money to move out But this situation does pose ethical and social of the neighbourhood. In the end, the person who bought the property would have a cheap problems today where you have in London many twenty and thirty-year olds who cannot flat. About 50% of the flats are occupied by these immigrant tenants and they can only afford to rent in the city and who have no way of getting social housing. Ironically many stay six months—the landlord can rent for six months and then toss them out. of these people are now renting from the