Housing Ministry    – Mortgage Strategy

Social housing sales came in at just over 17,500 last year in England, tumbling by around 40% compared to the previous two years, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government data shows.   

Social house sales amounted to 17,504 in 2023/24, compared to 24,278 the year before, down 39%, and 24,925 the year before that, down 42%.  

The data may be welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner, who has previously said Right to Buy discounts of up to 70% offered to council tenants may be cut. 

An eight-week consultation by the Housing Ministry, which sought views on, “how the Right to Buy should be reformed,” closed last month. 

The paper said: “We want to ensure that council tenants who have lived in, and paid rent on, their social homes for many years can retain the opportunity to own their home.  

“However, reform of Right to Buy is essential to better protect much-needed social housing stock, boost council capacity and build more social homes than we lose, supporting the government’s commitment to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.”  

Last year, Right to Buy sales tumbled by 38% to 8,656 with most of the remainder of social housing sales coming from a mixture of “fully staircased sales” and “other sales”, according to Ministry of Housing data. 

Right to Buy reform is part of the government’s wider drive to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years. The country built around one million houses over the last five years. 

Tenants can currently buy homes under the Right to Buy scheme if they have lived in social housing for three years, at a maximum discount of £102,400 across England, or £136,400 in London. 

The policy was introduced in 1980 by former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as one of her flagship reforms. 

Since 1980, there have been over 2 million home sales under the Right to Buy scheme, according to Housing Ministry data in March. However, councils say they have little capacity to replace their social housing stocks. 

The policy was initially credited with increasing rates of home ownership, but more recently has been blamed for contributing to the rise in homelessness.