Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

IIRC, last year, they had an article in the Standard about a woman who had bought a flat in the seedier part of Soho for (IIRC) less than £80,000 and recently sold the same two bed flat for £2.5m.

Well, following the naming pattern above, the name for it would be Nosex, maybe they thought that name would put the population off?

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

Even places like Richmond upon Thames were running at a household earnings to house prices multiplier of around 4.5 historically, relative to the 3.5 nationwide.

Thanks to a combination of Tory liberalisation of the mortgage market, Labour riding the credit boom, and both being completely ignorant of that the Town and County Planning Act is in no way fit for purpose in the 21st century those multipliers are more like 10 times for Richmond upon Thames and 5 times for the rest of the country.

The scarier part is that Richmond upon Thames has as I remember the second highest median household income in the whole of London.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

this is why I have always said council houses should stay as council houses for rent, people now profit from buildings built for helping the poor.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

Do you own your home or do you rent? If the former you have a good guide price to the value of your house so quit whining, if the latter then your jealous that you never brought your council home. Rights is rights.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

Ex Council houses that I know are now modernised, warm and comfy after loads of money has been spent on them by the people who bought them initially or later. And most who live in them have pride in their homes and gardens. No feral offspring (that I know of) either. House prices have risen for them.

Stand that against the rows and rows of council houses that are being demolished or sold for £1 (especially in the North) because Councils have spent the absolute minimum (if that) on them. And no-one wants to buy them as they are in "rough neighbourhoods" where often the ferals rule.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

and the question has to be asked why are they demolishing houses with a massive waiting list?

Councils do tend to spend more than private landlords, many private rental properties are really bad.

e.g. my sister in her council house the council expanded her kitchen, double glazed the whole building and fitted a new boiler.

My landlord would never do any of that.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

The answer to the question "why are they demolishing them?" is simple - many of the houses being demolished aren't fit for habitation. Many of them are Victorian terraces, in structurally poor condition; many more of them are post-war crud in even poorer condition.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

My property is ex council, the person had it as a council property from the 50's when built, bought it late 80's and till he died a few year ago. I bought it 2 year ago for 90k ish, a 3 bed semi and it was valued at £145k at the time. Others on the street have sold at around the same mark but I have a bit of land with mine too plus its a total opposite to what it was when I bought it.

Reason I bought mine, well built not like the rest of them and in an area where I wanted.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

Alferret., I am not whining. I live in a council property. Most of council accomadation is not worth buying, unless you want to spend a lot of money on it.

I have lived in my council house for 28 years, and there is so many problems with it. You would have to knock it down and rebuild it.

Problem is council employ cowboy builders, all they want to do is finish at 3.30 each day. And are not bothered how they repair anything. As no one checks there work.

Good example is that we had a contractor round 17 years ago, drilling up the kitchen floor, placed plastic bags down and then took out the main foundation for the stairs - and 17 years later, the plank of wood that they used to hold the staircase is still there, today.

Some council houses are just too expensive to repair, through years of disrepair.

To be honest, l think the cost of buying a house is far to expensive

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

any house can be fixed.

There is people who have a business of buying run down houses and doing them up, its profitable, I expect its cheaper for council's to fix houses than to keep paying extortionate rents to private landlords for housing benefit claimants. Or to pay for people to stay in b&b's and hotels.

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

On the contrary - there are people who are in the business of buying crumbling houses, "doing them up" and then renting them out, only for the tenants to find the underlying problems have merely been plastered over. Cue lots of documentaries on channel 4 and posts on this forum from people moaning about private sector landlords.

Doubtless some properties could be renovated, but when you have half a dozen streets of terraced houses, some of which may be repairable but others of which would require major structural intervention, it can easily be cheaper to simply bring in the wrecking ball.

Add to that, do we really want to be putting people in thin-walled, high-density housing with inadequate car parking in the 21st century, even if it can be brought back into use?

Re: Crazy Ex Council House market prices!
 

Yeah tenants may not be happy, but there is always new tenants to replace them, people like me end up putting up with it. Since constantly moving is too expensive.