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We have to sell some homes
• I WAS very disappointed to read your misleading article (Fat flipping profits are incredible, August 28).
The fact is that we are only forced into a position – where we have to sell a limited number of empty hard-to-repair homes to raise money – by this Labour government which has withheld the £283million they offered Camden five years ago, despite demands from this administration and the one before.
They insist we get our homes up to the Decent Homes standard already achieved in neighbouring boroughs but they don’t help us with extra funding.
The government’s rules also determine the basis on which we sell empty properties, their rules, not ours, are that we can only sell to developers. Developers of course seek to make a profit, so it can be no surprise that when they sell a property on they ask more for it than they paid, though we only sell through public auctions to ensure the best return.
However, the rule we in Camden have imposed is that developers must take the risk of spending their own money on getting properties up to standard before they can be sold. Any such properties must be brought back into a habitable state and put on the market as soon as possible, within three years as a maximum.
We, of course, want any such homes to be lived in not land-banked as part of our campaign to get the number of empty homes in Camden down. So when we sell an empty home that we can’t afford to repair, the developer has to sign up to a legal covenant requiring them to spend their own money on the necessary repairs and improvements before selling it on. The developer cannot sell the property until they have invested their own money in fixing these repairs. However, a developer can, of course, market the property before completion, as happens with many new-build properties these days, though it should be remembered that the price a property goes on the market for may be very different from the price it eventually secures.
We are, of course, doing all we can to get the maximum return from selling the minimum number of homes. We currently have 23,800 tenanted homes, of which nearly 15,000 fail the government’s minimum standards – so nearly 50,000 council residents are waking up each day in sub-standard housing. On current projections, when we’ve finished this programme we’ll have 23,500 homes all of which meet the standards and 50,000 residents will be waking up each day to better heating, improved kitchens and bathrooms, safer wiring. I and my colleagues are confident we are doing the right thing.
CLLR CHRIS NAYLOR
Executive Member for Homes and Housing Strategy
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