If there was enough council housing to go round?

Would private landlords find themselves out of business?

But why would a woking perdson rent when they can afford a mortgage? Its dead money and your rights are so limited in a privately rented home - no pets etc.

no, the majority of people who are working would not choose to live in council accomodation.

No because people do still rent homes. Not everyone expects to be housed by the Council.

Probably not, although they'd have to reduce their rents to be competitive. There are short-term tenants (holiday rents) and, quite honestly, I don't apply for council housing because I'm quite happy where I am. Landlords might have to work harder for their money. At the moment I work on the premise that if I don't ask my landlord for anything he won't increase the rent.

I rent out of choice. I wouldn't be able to afford to buy a property in the area that I am renting. I have had two mortgages. With the second I had neighbour problems and, had I been renting, it would have been much simpler to up and go. Purchasing entails legal costs, the value of the investment can go down (negative equity was common in the eighties). It's quite a commitment and is putting all your eggs in one basket. I prefer investing in the stock market. It's the British obsession with property ownership that puts the prices up.

And people who buy flats rarely buy the flat, although sometimes they buy a share of the freehold. What they buy is the right to occupy the flat until a certain date (a lease): they still have to pay ground rent and there are similar restrictions to renting.

wont happen!! councils rely on landlords too much to bridge the gap they made by selling off council stock & not building new ones.
and where do you think all the asylum seekers & imigrants are going to stay.???
there will always be a demand for private rental accomadation like there is in most other countries

Council housing is rubbish, on rubbish estates surrounded by rubbish people - only the desparate would choose to have the council as a landlord.

Councils are also pretty incompetent, so a private landlord or housing association is going to offer far better service and value for money.

As a landlord a council can only compete with private housing by manipulating the system - subsidising their tennants out of everyones taxes (poll tax etc), 'fixing' planning applications etc.

Yes.

If you think this would be a good thing for living conditions, go and talk to people from Russia, Poland, or East Germany, where the government provided housing for 50 years.

Compared to the kind of living conditions that they had, being without heating for a few weeks was GOOD.

Now, I'm not saying that you should put up with this kind of treatment from a landlord. When MY tenants phoned at 7pm on New Year's Eve last year, to say that their boiler had packed up, I was round at 7:30 with oil heaters so at least they had heating (and the immersion heater worked, so they had hot water.)

The boiler was fixed on the 4th January, which was the earliest I could find ANY plumber.

I hope so but don't look to this government to build enough council houses - they are worse than the Tories in that respect -

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mich...

I've never understood this British obsession with owning property, especially when it is overpriced.
There will always be a demand for social housing, and not all of it is rubbish with rubbish tenants. Buckingham Palace is a council house, is the tenant in there rubbish?.
Too many families are going to lose their homes this year as the prices of property falls. Where will they go to find a home, yes, that's right, the good old council.
We need to build more social housing, but with a more mature attitude to who gains tenancies.
Stop single mothers jumping the housing queue. Immigrants and asylum seekers denied access if there are British people waiting.
If these rules were followed, then there would be enough social housing for people who needed it.

Landlords will be OK. There is not enough Council Housing to go round because Margaret Thatcher started the 'right to buy' scheme for council tenants which relly became 'right to sell' as more and more properties moved out of council control and through the private market.