BBC analysis reveals Help to Buy’s impact

Analysis by BBC News has shown that one in three new build properties outside London were bought through the Help to Buy scheme.

Designed to boost the housing market and make home buying more accessible across the country, the government scheme has been less successful in London, with just one in 10 homes purchased through the flagship scheme.

Using official figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government, the BBC analysis revealed that Help to Buy loans were used to purchase 76,559 homes outside of London between April 2013 and April 2016 - the equivalent to 30 per cent of the 255,960 privately built new properties completed in that period.

In London, however, there were 4,483 completions using equity loans, which is the equivalent to 11 per cent of the 41,480 privately built homes over the same time. There was a surge in uptake of the loans in Greater London since February, when the government increased the upper limit for new home-buyers in the capital from 20 per cent to 40 per cent of the property's value.

The rise in the upper limit appears to have made a difference, with 10 equity loans habing been taken in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham by October 2016. At an average of £190,000 each, six of the buyers in the borough were helped between June and September 2016 alone.

Taking all households into account fewer than one in every 500 London homes has a Help to Buy loan, compared with one in every 200 elsewhere in England.

The highest number of loans taken per head of population was in Bedford, where the 1,268 loans was equivalent to two in every 100 households.