Only 5,949 Council Houses in the Grantham and South Kesteven area left – opportunity or problem?

The ‘Right to Buy’ scheme was a policy introduced by Maggie Thatcher in 1980 which gave secure council tenants the legal right to buy the Council home they were living in with huge discounts. The heyday of Council ‘Right To Buys’ was in the 80’s and 90’s, when 1,719,368 homes in the country were sold in this manner between October 1980 and April 1998. However, in 1997, Tony Blair reduced the discount available to tenants of council houses and the numbers of properties being bought under the Right to Buy declined.

So what does this mean for Grantham homeowners and landlords? Well quite a lot in fact!

Has owning a home become an unattainable dream for the 487 Grantham 28 year olds

My parents bought their first house in the 1960’s, they were in their early 20’s. Interestingly, looking at some research by the Post Office from a few years ago, in the 1960’s the average age people bought their first house was 23. By the early 1970s, it had reached 27, rising to 28 in the early 1980’s.

This year alone, 487 people in Grantham will turn 28 and 551 in 2017 .. and dare I say 468 in 2018 .. year in year out the conveyor belt carries on .. where are the Grantham youngsters going to live?

3.7% rise in Grantham Property Values adds weight to the town’s Housing Crisis

Grantham’s continuing housing shortage is putting the town’s (and the Country’s) repute as a nation of homeowners ‘under threat’, as the number of houses being built continues to be woefully inadequate in meeting the ever demanding needs of the growing population in the town.   In fact, I was talking to my parents the other day at a family get together; the subject of the Grantham Property market came up in the conversation (as I am sure it does at many family parties in Grantham) after the weather and politics. My parents said It used to be that if you went out to work and did the right thing, you would expect that relatively quickly over the course of your career you would be buying a house, you would go on holiday every year, you would save for a pension.   But now things seem to have changed?