More than 450,000 homes sold to people using Help to Buy

More than 458,000 homes have been sold to people using one or more of the government’s Help to Buy schemes. Just over 400,000 went to first time buyers.

Under the Help to Buy: ISA, the government will boost your savings by 25%. So, for every £200 you save, you receive a government bonus of £50. The maximum government bonus you can receive is £3,000. The money must be used to buy a home to receive the bonus.

The latest quarterly statistics also show that:

• first time buyers have now opened 1.2 million Help to Buy: ISAs, offering government bonuses of up to £3,000 on top of their savings
• the average house price purchased through the schemes is £201,881
• over 93% of completions across the Help to Buy schemes have taken place outside of London.

The most completions using the Help to Buy: ISA have taken place in the North West and Yorkshire & the Humber. In total, 169,980 completions have taken place across the UK since its launch in December 2015.

The London Help to Buy scheme – which provides an equity loan of up to 40% for buyers in the capital with a 5% deposit – has helped 13,697 buyers across 33 boroughs purchase their own property between February 2016 and June 2018.

More than 183,000 completions have now taken place through the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme, which offers buyers up to 20% of a newly built home’s costs so they only need to provide a 5% deposit.

By March 2021, the government expects to have invested around £22 billion in the scheme, supporting up to 360,000 households into homeownership.

Please contact Jackie Hand or Gary Baber if you would like advice about the legal aspects of buying or selling a home.