More than £70bn of expensive social housing in London should be sold off to pay for a new wave of housebuilding, a report has recommended.
Placing the highest-value council properties on the market when they become vacant would generate £4.5bn to construct up to 170,000 social homes a year, think tank Policy Exchange’s report says.
One in five properties in the social housing stock are worth more than the average house price in the area, the Ending Expensive Social Tenancies report says.
The 816,000 homes which fall into this category are worth a total of £159bn, while £71.9bn of this stock is in London. Given that about 3.5% of buildings become vacant each year, after debts are paid off, selling them would raise £4.5bn.
Policy Exchange, which was set up by Conservative MP Nick Boles, claims introducing such a policy would cut the housing waiting list by as much as 600,000 in five years.
Money raised by the system should be used to build additional homes and the report recommends bringing in spending floors to make sure standards are driven up in the quality of stock.
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