Buying your council home with family through joint Right to Buy

You do not have to buy your council home alone. In England you can make a Right to Buy application jointly with someone who shares your tenancy, or with up to three family members who have lived with you for the past 12 months, even if they are not named on the tenancy. Done well, a joint application turns a discount the tenant cannot afford to use into a mortgage a family can carry. This is general information rather than legal advice.

Who can join the application

The government's Right to Buy guidance sets out the two groups. Joint tenants can always apply together. Family members who are not tenants can join if the property has been their main home for the 12 months before the application, and up to three of them can be added.

The 12-month rule is the planning point. A son or daughter moving back specifically to support the purchase starts the clock on the day they genuinely make it their main home, and the landlord can ask for evidence, so the application follows a year behind the decision.

Whose years count for the discount

The discount is earned by time as a public sector tenant, and on a joint application the government's discounts page says you count the years of whoever has been a public sector tenant the longest. That is the whole logic of buying with family: the parent brings the years, the working children bring the mortgage capacity.

For a house the discount starts at 35% for three to five years of tenancy and rises by 1% for each further year. For a flat it starts at 50% and rises by 2%. Every discount is capped by region, at between £16,000 and £38,000, and our full guide to Right to Buy eligibility and discounts sets out the regional table in full.

A worked example

A mother has been a secure council tenant for 15 years in a house valued at £190,000 in the North West. Her son has lived there for the past two years and joins the application. Fifteen years earns a 45% discount, which would be £85,500, but the North West cap is £26,000, so the family pays £164,000, with the son's income supporting the mortgage.

Note what the cap does to the arithmetic. A tenant with only six years would earn 36%, £68,400 on paper, and still hit the same £26,000 cap. Beyond a fairly modest property value the discount is identical for almost everyone, so the real question in a family purchase is not the tenancy maths but who can service the loan.

Everyone owns, and everyone is bound

Every joint applicant goes on the title, and the post-purchase rules bind all of you. Sell within five years and the discount is repayable on a sliding scale: all of it in the first year, then 80, 60, 40 and 20% in years two to five, calculated on the value at the time you sell rather than the original figures. Sell within 10 years and you must first offer the home to your old landlord or another social landlord at market value. Our article on selling a Right to Buy home works through what that costs in practice.

Family arrangements deserve the same formality as any co-purchase. A deed of trust recording each person's share, who pays what, and what happens if someone wants out costs a few hundred pounds and prevents most later disputes. If a relative is helping with money but not joining the application, record that contribution properly too, because an unwritten one has no protection at all.

The strongest joint application is usually the boring one — 12 months of genuine residence, evidence ready, shares agreed in writing before anyone signs. When you are ready to apply, you can get quotes from conveyancers side by side for the purchase itself.