UK Help to Buy Schemes Continue to Benefit First Time Buyers

Posted on Monday, May 18, 2015

The UK’s flagship housing schemes aimed at boosting the property market continue to flourish with first time buyers benefitting the most, the latest published data shows.

In the first two years of the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme to the end of March 2015, some 47,018 properties were bought with the total value of these equity loans at £1.99 billion and the value of the properties sold under the scheme totalling £10.01 billion.

The mean purchase price of a property bought under the scheme was £212,932, compared with a mean equity loan of £42,394 and some 82% of the homes were bought by first time buyers.

Figures for the Help to Buy NewBuy scheme saw 17 home purchases were made in the first quarter of the year, bringing the total number of house purchases up to 5,706 since the launch of the scheme in March 2012.

The Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme can be used to purchase a new build property up to the value of £600,000, with a maximum equity loan of £120,000. The numbers of homes purchased in the scheme to the end of March were greatest in the £150,001 to £200,000 price bracket, representing 30.9%.

The data also shows that of total sales some 22.1% were for properties between £200,001 and £250,000. These two price brackets combined therefore accounted for over half of the total completions in the scheme.

Source: PropertyWire

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