Council Urged To Investigate Firm Using Right to Buy To ‘Amass Property’

Westminster City Council has been urged to begin an investigation after a newspaper report apparently exposed a company's scheme to profit from the controversial right to buy scheme. An undercover reporter for the Sunday Times recorded a director of a London property firm boasting that he hopes to make enough money from buying up heavily discounted council homes under right to buy that he will "never have to work again". Nicholas Carlino, of London Investment Property Group, gleefully told the reporter that he could make huge amounts of profit from right to buy because local authorities are "massively undervaluing" their homes. Carlino is then apparently free to snap them up on the cheap and resell them for much greater prices. Now Westminster's Labour councillors have said that the company's activities may be connected to the fact that almost 20% of the borough's right to buy sales since 2012 have been to tenants on housing benefit. Read more on 24dash.