The Help to Buy scheme has been a champion of some, and an aggravation for others. Although it has helped around 120,000 people to purchase their home, people have argued since its conception that it would boost the price of other houses on the market.
New claims have reinforced this, saying that houses have been priced upward by £8,250 on average.
The £26 billion scheme has been used to help to get people onto the property ladder, but hasn’t seemed to increase the level of house building to the point where demand is being met.
George Osborne described his scheme when it was launched “a dramatic intervention to get out housing market moving,” but the controversy claims it simply hasn’t got it moving.
Housing charity Shelter has found that total mortgage lending has gone up by 8.4 per cent, compared to how it would have been had the scheme not been instigated. This sounds good, but the supply seems not to have increased to match.
However, the issue with an average is that the data from Help to Buy varies drastically region by region. Furthermore, it is important to remember what a difference the Help to Buy scheme has made to the lives of the 120,000 people whom is has boosted onto the property ladder, and that the housing shortage is a much wider issue of the country as a whole, and not simply down to the Help to Buy schemes.
