I have received the following news from the Treasury.
Help to Buy has helped over 130,000 people achieve their aspiration of buying their own home. Since the launch of the Help to Buy: Equity Loan and Mortgage Guarantee schemes:
- 80% of scheme completions have been made by first-time buyers, with more expected following the launch of the government’s Help to Buy: ISA scheme on 1 December;
- average house price was £186,000, significantly below the national average;
- over 130,000 housing completions through the Help to Buy scheme;
- 94% of Help to Buy completions took place outside of London;
- almost half of Help to Buy completions have been for new-build schemes.
First-time buyers
Help to Buy is helping people who need it most, with 100,000 households having bought their first home thanks to the scheme. This is 80% of overall Help to Buy buyers, demonstrating that the scheme is successfully targeting those who need help getting on the housing ladder.
First-time buyers will have a further boost from the Help to Buy: ISA, which banks and building societies across the UK are now offering. Under this scheme, first-time buyers can save up to £200 a month towards their first home and the government will boost their savings by 25%, or £50 for every £200, up to a £3,000 bonus.
Getting Britain building
Help to Buy is also supporting the country’s economy by getting Britain building again. Almost half of homes bought under the scheme were new-build properties, contributing to the sharpest rise in house building orders since 2003.
This has supported new housing construction output, which has been growing for 30 consecutive months. Both annual housing starts and planning approvals are at a seven year high, with 660,000 new homes being built since 2010.
December 23, 2015
Positive results from government action to build many more homes and the Conservatives should be applauded for it. Labour with their policies will never achieve the same. Now the next step has to be policies and actions to bring the exorbitant price of land down. To do that it is necessary to make much more of it available even more so than current policies are doing. The cost of land does not help the economy as it absorbs money that make a few rich who have done nothing productive to become so and so are depriving the economy of money that would be better used in productive ways.