The Right to Acquire scheme helps housing association tenants to buy their current home at a discount.

The scheme only applies to properties built or bought by your housing association landlord using public funds since 1 April 1997.

It includes the properties that Chorley Community Housing received from Chorley Borough Council by Large Scale Voluntary Transfer in 2007.

To qualify for the Right to Acquire you must meet the following conditions:

• Your home must have been built or bought by your housing association landlord using public funds since 1 April 1997.
• You must have been a housing association, council or armed forces tenant for at least five years.
• The property you want to buy must be self-contained.
• The property you want to buy should be your only or main home.

You cannot apply for the Right to Acquire if you are being made bankrupt or if a court has ordered you to leave your home.

The amount of discount you will get depends on where you live.  In the areas where the members of the Adactus Group Structure have properties the discount is either £9,000 or £10,000.

If you have previously had a discount to buy a council or housing association home, this may be taken off your Right to Acquire discount.

Your landlord gets an ‘open market valuation’ to work out the price of your home. An open market valuation is the price a property is valued at when it is sold, eg through an estate agent.

For example, if your home was valued at £100,000 and the discount for your area was £10,000, you could buy your home for £90,000.

If you sell your Right to Acquire home within five years of owning it, you’ll have to pay back the discount that you got. You’ll only have to do this if you applied to buy your home through Right to Acquire on or after 18 January 2005.

How much you have to pay to your original landlord depends on:

• any change in the value of the property (up or down) since you bought it
• the length of time you’ve owned the property

If you decide to sell your property after five years, you won’t have to pay the discount back.