Was Help to Buy a timely market intervention with a valid social purpose or a political gimmick that unintentionally showered housebuilders with taxpayers’ cash? Or both: this isn’t a straightforward question.
‘This government supports those who dream of owning their own home,’ said a statement from Philip Hammond last week. So far the ‘equity loan scheme’ launched by George Osborne in 2013 and now extended until 2023 has underpinned 194,000 home sales, the great majority to first-time buyers in the provinces, while another 300,000 have been supported by a £3,000 savings top-up.
Meanwhile, housebuilders have upped their game as Osborne wished: annual new home numbers, having almost halved by 2013 from a pre-crisis peak of 200,000, climbed back to 184,000 in 2016/17. And politicos might claim that happy home-owners are more likely to vote Tory, another factor which doubtless weighed for the former chancellor: without Help to Buy, Theresa May would have looked even weaker after the 2017 election and the progress of Brexit would have been even more chaotic.
So much for the positives: the policy has given thousands a leg onto the property ladder, across the north-south divide, while bringing needed stimulus to the construction sector.
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