What are Yo-yo Homes? The former council houses making ex-tenants rich

In 2014, one tenant living in a council home in Hackney bought their property under Right to Buy for £95,050. Just six years later, in 2021, they sold it back to the council for £365,000 – pocketing a profit of £269,950. The property is just one example of more than 100 Yo-yo Homes uncovered by Big Issue as part of an investigation into the scramble from councils to undo Right to Buy.

Against a backdrop of homelessness pushing towns and cities towards financial oblivion, council bosses are keen to get their hands on homes. In their desperation, they are turning to homes they were forced to sell just a few years previously under Right to Buy

Big Issue can reveal councils are losing millions on these Yo-yo Homes – while a select number of ex-tenants get rich by selling their homes back to the council.

Our findings have prompted calls for reform, and led to warnings the Right to Buy system isn’t fit for purpose.

So what are Yo-yo Homes, why are they happening, what are experts saying about them, and what can be done? We’ve broken it down for you.

Read more:

• The ‘Yo-yo Homes’, revealed: How ex-council tenants make over £200k selling homes back to councils
• Should we end Thatcher’s Right to Buy? How scrapping scheme could help solve UK’s housing crisis
• Right to Buy sold us down the river

What are Yo-yo Homes?

A Yo-Yo Home is a property bought from a council under Right to Buy, then sold back to the council between five and 10 years later, at a profit.

This is the period when councils have the right of first refusal on a Right to Buy property being sold by the owner, but will not get any of the discount back.

Examples of Yo-yo Homes we’ve discovered include: 

• Star Road in Isleworth, south London: In 2016, a tenant bought it under Right to Buy for £272,662. Just over six years later, in 2023, Hounslow Council re-purchased the home for £575,000 – losing £302,338 on a single property.
• Princes Road, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire: A property was sold under Right to Buy for £16,000 in 2016. Fast forward to 2024, and Cheshire West and Chester Council bought it back for £170,000 – over 10 times more than what they paid for it, barely eight years later.
• Cambridge Gardens, in Kingston-upon-Thames: In 2018 it was sold under Right to Buy for £90,000, council records show. In 2024, the council bought it back for £290,000. The council lost £200,000 on that property in just under six years.
• 84 Castleton Road, a small terraced house in a Swindon cul-de-sac: Purchased under Right to Buy by a tenant in 2020 for £108,500. Swindon Council bought it back in 2025 for £240,000 – a loss of £131,500 in five years.

Our examples have cost a handful of councils collectively £15 million over the past five years.

Why are Yo-yo Homes happening?

Yo-yo Homes begin with Right to Buy. Anybody living in a council property for a certain period of time – currently three years, though Labour plans to extend this – can buy it for a discounted price.

But rules around Right to Buy mean that if you sell it within 10 years, the council has the automatic option to buy it at full market price. If you’re selling the home within five years, you must pay some of the discount back, starting at 100% in the first year and going down to 20% in the fifth year. But after this, no discount must be repaid, and anybody selling it back to the council pockets pure profit.

It’s this loophole which creates Yo-yo Homes.

Then there’s the question of why councils are buying homes up at all.

Firstly because of Right to Buy – they keep losing houses, and they don’t have a choice over this. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has called on the Labour government to suspend Right to Buy, while London mayor Sadiq Khan wants councils in the capital to be able to pause sales. Unable to stop them disappearing, councils are simply buying them back: Big Issue has discovered over half the homes purchased by councils in the past five years have previously been sold off under the policy.

The second big reason is homelessness. Across England, council spending on temporary accommodation rose by 25% in a single year to £2.8 billion. Councils in London have warned the crisis means some local authorities in the city could face bankruptcy after overspending their homelessness budgets by 60%. Local authorities need somewhere to

Swindon Borough Council said its Yo-yo Homes were purchased for families in urgent need of accommodation, while Kingston Council said it was looking at properties to increase its social housing and temporary accommodation capacity.

Where does the money come from? There are big differences. In London, Sadiq Khan has made pots of money available for councils to buy back homes sold under Right to Buy, with the Council Homes Acquisition Programme. But outside London, help is patchier. Swindon said its Yo-yo Homes were funded with its own cash and money from Homes England.

Even in London, Hackney Council told us the purchases wouldn’t be possible without help.

“This buy back programme makes an important contribution to the supply and availability of council homes,” said councillor Guy Nicholson, cabinet member for housing management and regeneration at the London Borough of Hackney. “But to do this requires significant sums of money, which can only be raised through drawing on central government and mayor of London grants to complement the council’s own capital resources.”

What are experts , politicians, campaigners and councils saying about Yo-yo Homes?

Florence Eshalomi, Labour MP for Vauxhall and chair of parliament’s housing select committee said: “What this blatantly shows is that the current Right to Buy policy isn’t working.”

She added: “It is really worrying, especially when you look at the fact that across England, a number of councils are struggling in terms of day to day finances. A number of those councils are facing budgetary pressures because of temporary accommodation costs. If we had these homes, people could be rehoused.”

Chris Hayes, chief economist at think tank Common Wealth, said our findings posed issues of fairness. “The Right to Buy beneficiaries are able to enjoy a massive capital windfall that other households are not,” he said.

“That then raises questions of who is able to be in that position to enjoy it in the first place? It takes the question of who is able to get into social housing into a much higher stakes question.”

Big Issue ambassador Kwajo Tweneboa said: “Right to Buy might have once been sold as a way to create opportunity, but in reality, it has drained social housing supply and driven the housing crisis and homelessness beyond control. Councils are now paying the price – quite literally, and it’s taxpayers and residents who suffer most.

“I’ve always been clear that it is the single worst housing policy introduced by a prime minister in modern history and now we’re paying the price for it. The policy by default has been a complete failure.”

What could be done about Yo-yo Homes?

One option would be to allow councils to stop selling homes under Right to Buy – meaning they wouldn’t then have to buy them back soon after. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham wants the policy suspended, while London mayor Sadiq Khan wants councils to be able to halt sales. But the Labour government has stood firm on the policy.

Swindon council told Big Issue they want the repayment threshold extended beyond five years. “We would welcome any reforms to extend the Right to Buy discount period because, as these cases demonstrate, we would have been able to buy back these homes for considerably less money,” a spokesperson said. Labour has promised to increase the threshold to 10 years, but at the moment these remain just plans.

One expert suggested a hard limit on the amount of profit people are able to make from re-selling council homes. “You can’t expect to get a massive discount at the behest of the taxpayer and local authorities and then expect to be selling your property at market rate when you didn’t buy it for market rate. It’s just not fair,” said Hollie Wright, an assistant researcher at the New Economics Foundation. “You’re expecting other people to foot the bill for your discount. I think that having a cap on what you’re able to sell it for, and probably sell it back to the council for, is very reasonable.”

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