Help to Buy sales hit 73,000

According to the latest figures, 38,052 households have been helped into new build homes under HTB2 up to November 2014, up 2,099 on October 2014. Of these, 83% were first time buyers (31,640) rising to 94% outside London.

Additionally, 30,269 households have bought through the Help to Buy: mortgage guarantee scheme, while 5,518 households have bought a new build home through the NewBuy scheme.

Government schemes represent only part of the total, with Halifax figures this week showing 326,500 first time buyer purchases last year, up 22% on 2013.

Areas that benefitted most from HTB2 include Leeds (628 sales), Milton Keynes (516), Peterborough (512), Birmingham (465) and Bedford (454).

Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis said:

"Our long-term economic plan has turned this country around from the one we inherited, suffering from a crashed economy and a housing market where builders wouldn’t build, lenders wouldn’t lend and buyers couldn’t buy.

"Now numbers of first-time buyers are at their highest since 2007, housebuilding continues to climb and planning permissions are at record levels. All these measures combined are helping record numbers of people into a new home, including 73,000 households benefiting from Help to Buy and we will keep striving to get that total even higher."