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RIGHT TO BUY |
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| . | p17 A reader replies to last issue’s article on council house purchase I am somewhat surprised that you have allowed a solicitor, David Greaney, to advertise his Right to Buy legal services freely and, if you do make it a practice to do so, you should at least make sure that such authors have their facts straight and give an informed view. Greaney says that a condition of purchase of a Right to Buy is that one must retain ownership for 3 to 5 years. This is just plain wrong. What does happen is that the Council places a legal charge against the property in the sum of the discount given to run three years from completion of the purchase. If the purchaser decides to sell within those three years, the purchaser is obliged to pay the Council back a percentage of the discount given. That percentage is calculated according to the number of years the purchaser owns the property. After the end of the three year time period, there is no percentage of the discount payable and the charge may be removed from the records held at HM Land Registry. Secondly, the tone of Greaney’s article gives the impression that the exercise of one’s Right to Buy is an opportunity that should not be missed and does so without bothering to distinguish between freehold and leasehold property! Whilst the purchase of any freehold property, at the right price may be viewed as an investment, the same cannot be said when a purchaser’s freeholder and landlord is the London Borough of Hackney. What makes Greaney think that a purchaser will have any better luck in getting the Council to repair his property as a leaseholder than he did as a tenant? Indeed, why should a tenant even consider purchasing a leasehold, only to lumber himself with exorbitant service charges to pay for repairs that the Council itself should have tended to years before! What would have made a far more interesting article would have been to investigate the dodgy lenders who encourage those who are least able to afford their rip-off interest rates, non-high street mortgages. These lenders can be found in the back of many of the Sunday tabloids and target those with CCJs and bad credit. With their over the odds mortgages coupled with Hackney’s high service charges, it is little wonder these council tenants turned home owners often ring the Council’s legal department asking if they will ‘buy the house back’... Yours sincerely Kristin Heimark Church Street
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