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The right to buy social housing in Britain: a welfare analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Disney

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Sussex)

  • Guannan Luo

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and City University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

We investigate the impact on social welfare of the UK policy introduced in 1980 by which public housing tenants (council housing in UK parlance) had the right to purchase their houses at heavily discounted prices. This was known as the Right to Buy (RTB) policy. Although this internationally-unique policy was the largest source of public privatization revenue in the UK and raised home ownership as a share of housing tenure by around 15 percentage points, the policy has been little analyzed by economists. We analyze the equilibrium housing policy of the public authority in terms of quality and quantity of publicly provided housing both in the absence and presence of a RTB policy. We examine the incentives to purchase using RTB for households with different wealth trajectories and differing qualities of public housing. We investigate the welfare effects of various adjustments to the policy, in particular (i) tighter restrictions on resale; (ii) reduced discounts on RTB sales; and (iii) returning the proceeds from RTB sale to local authorities to replace part of the public properties sold.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Disney & Guannan Luo, 2015. "The right to buy social housing in Britain: a welfare analysis," IFS Working Papers W15/05, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:15/05
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    File URL: https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/wps/WP201505.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2011. "Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 255-296, March.
    2. Ortalo-Magne, Francois & Rady, Sven, 2002. "Tenure choice and the riskiness of non-housing consumption," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 266-279, September.
    3. Rosen, Harvey S & Rosen, Kenneth T & Holtz-Eakin, Douglas, 1984. "Housing Tenure, Uncertainty, and Taxation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(3), pages 405-416, August.
    4. Ioannides, Yannis M., 1979. "Temporal risks and the tenure decision in housing markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 293-297.
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    Cited by:

    1. Dai Yuan Li & Cong Wei Xie & Shu Hao Chen & Xiu Xiang Zou, 2019. "Research on the Pricing of Shared Ownership Housing," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 6(1), pages 30-44, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing policy; Right to Buy; social welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • R38 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Government Policy

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