How much discount can I get under the Right to Buy scheme?

Full answer

The Right to Buy scheme lets eligible long-term council tenants (and some housing association tenants under the related Right to Acquire scheme) buy their home at a discount to market value, but the discount caps have been substantially reduced in recent reforms compared with the much larger discounts available in earlier years. **Qualifying period** To qualify for Right to Buy, you generally need to have been a public sector tenant (council or, in some cases, certain housing association) for a minimum combined period, commonly at least 3 years (not necessarily continuous, and not necessarily all with the same landlord), before you can exercise the right. **How the discount builds up** The discount percentage increases the longer you have been a qualifying tenant, starting at a base percentage after the minimum qualifying period and then increasing by a set percentage for each additional year of tenancy, up to a maximum percentage of the property's value -- but critically, this percentage-based discount is then capped by an absolute maximum CASH discount limit, which is the figure that has been dramatically reduced in recent reform. **The cash discount cap** Following recent government reforms specifically aimed at protecting the supply of social housing (by making Right to Buy discounts less generous, reducing the incentive to buy and thereby remove homes from the social housing stock), the maximum cash discount has been cut substantially from the levels that applied for around a decade beforehand (which had reached tens of thousands of pounds) down to a much lower cap -- generally around £16,000 outside London, with a separate, generally somewhat higher, cap specifically for London boroughs. These figures are subject to ongoing government review, so always check the current specific caps published by gov.uk or your local council before relying on a historic figure. **Worked example** A long-standing council tenant qualifies for a calculated percentage discount that would, under the old uncapped rules, have been worth £70,000 based on their years of tenancy and the property's value. Under the current reduced cash cap, their actual discount is limited to the current maximum cap (e.g. £16,000 outside London) regardless of how much larger the percentage-based calculation would otherwise produce -- meaning many long-term tenants now receive considerably smaller discounts in cash terms than tenants purchasing under the same scheme a decade earlier would have received for an equivalent property and tenancy length. **Repayment if you sell soon after buying** If you sell the property within 5 years of using Right to Buy, you must repay some or all of the discount received on a sliding scale (repaying a higher proportion the sooner after purchase you sell), and some properties also carry a restriction requiring you to offer the property back to the council or a nominated housing body first if you sell within a set period. **Why the discount was reduced** The reduction in maximum discounts reflects a policy shift toward preserving social housing stock, since previous larger discounts had been criticised for accelerating the loss of council housing to the private market without a matching level of new social housing being built to replace it -- prospective Right to Buy applicants should get an up-to-date formal cost estimate directly from their landlord (which will apply the current caps and their own specific tenancy length) rather than relying on older, higher discount figures they may have seen quoted previously.

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