'Urgent' action needed on Right to Buy reforms after Yo-yo Homes 'scandal', Labour figures say

Yo-yo Homes are a ‘scandal’ and the government must ‘urgently’ act with reforms to stop councils losing millions buying back properties they owned just a few years previously, Labour figures have said.

Big Issue has revealed more than 120 Yo-Yo Homes across the country, sold off under Right to Buy then sold back to councils just a few years later for profits often exceeding £100,000. Coming amid a mass drive from councils to buy back homes lost to Right to Buy and fight homelessness, more than £15 million of taxpayers’ money had been lost in around a dozen local authorities over five years.

Pressure is growing on Labour as a think tank influential with Starmer’s government, Andy Burnham’s Labour deputy in Manchester, and a Labour-aligned housing campaign weigh in.

“Yo-yo Homes remind us all of the real cumulative consequences of years of failed housing policy since 1980,” Paul Dennett, deputy mayor of Greater Manchester and city mayor of Salford told Big Issue.

“Councils find themselves in the shocking position of needing to buy back homes purchased under Right to Buy to address the housing and homelessness crisis at hugely inflated costs compared with what the homes were sold for,”

Yo-yo Homes uncovered by Big Issue included properties in Greater Manchester. One property was sold under Right to Buy by Wigan’s council in 2016 for £56,000. The council bought the home back six years later, in 2022, for £190,000 – a loss of £134,000. Another property was sold under Right to Buy by Stockport’s council in 2016 for £32,300. The council bought it back in 2023, for £135,000 – losing £102,700 on a home it had owned seven years previously.

Yo-yo Homes are properties sold back to councils after five years – the point after which sellers do not have to pay any discount back. Dennett said Labour’s promised reforms extending this period to 10 years should be urgently brought forward.

Read more of our Yo-yo Homes investigation:

• The ‘Yo-yo Homes’, revealed: How ex-council tenants make over £200k selling homes back to councils
• Yo-yo Homes ‘indefensible’ and highlight broken system, MPs say after Big Issue’s Right to Buy exposé
• Reversing Right to Buy may sound radical. But it could fix the housing shortage

“The Labour government’s progress on reforming the Right to Buy policy is welcome news but continuing with the flexibilities given to councils beyond 2025-26 will be essential, in addition to urgently extending the time period in which councils having the right to request on the sale of the property for repayment of all or part of the discount received from exercising the Right to Buy be increased from five years to 10 years,” Dennett said. 

Big Issue’s Yo-yo Homes investigation has sparked comments from Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, former Labour MP and now Your Party founder Zarah Sultana, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and more. But it is now spreading to groups within Labour and influential with Starmer’s government.

Maya Singer Hobbs, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank, said the council losses showed “clearly this isn’t a system working as it should”.

“Given what we know about the state of local authority finances and social housing waiting lists, this feels like a problem that councils shouldn’t be facing,” said Singer Hobbs.

The IPPR has been described as having arguably the closest access to Starmer’s government of any progressive think tank, and two of its former directors worked for the prime minister in Downing Street until recently.

“In effect, the council is paying for that twice, because they subsidise the sale and then they’re paying the difference between the sale and the market rate, and that’s clearly an inefficient system, particularly when we know that the state of local authority finances isn’t great,” Singer Hobbs added.

“In many ways, it reveals the shortcomings of Right to Buy, because councils clearly need the stock. I think it also highlights that the current mechanisms that we have to deliver social and affordable housing are not meeting need. If they were, councils wouldn’t be having to buy back their stock. In many ways, this feels like a real symptom of a system that is not working as it should.”

Labour has committed to continuing the Right to Buy policy, which gives councils no choice but to sell homes to eligible tenants at a discount. However, it has slashed the discounts on offer and extended the time somebody must be a social tenant to qualify.

The cost of homelessness is pushing council budgets to the brink. A total of 169,000 children were living in temporary accommodation in March 2025, and council spending on temporary accommodation rose by a quarter in a single year. As a result, councils are trying to boost the stock of homes they own – and don’t have to pay private landlords for – by buying up properties.

“That councils are having to buy back ex-Right to Buy properties for up to three or more times the price they sold them is a scandal,” said Martin Wicks, secretary of the Labour Campaign for Council Housing. “Councils do it because it is cheaper than expensive new builds and because there is insufficient funding from central government to build on anything like the scale that is needed to reduce the numbers in temporary accommodation and on the waiting lists

Wicks said Right to Buy sales harmed councils by losing rent money to maintain existing homes. Despite Labour’s reforms, he said, councils would have to spend money trying to replace lost homes rather than on upkeep of current tenants’ properties.

Wicks added: “If the policy was ended, for the first time since 1980, it would guarantee that each home built or bought would increase the homes available. A large-scale building or acquisitions programme is the only means of beginning to drive down the numbers in temporary accommodation and on the waiting lists.”

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