First-Time Buyers Given Additional Help to Buy New Homes

    LONDON, ENGLAND, October 15, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Housing Minister for the Government has announced that there will be GBP280 million further funding that will be targeted to the Government's FirstBuy scheme and is hoped will help 16,500 first-time buyers. The FirstBuy Scheme has helped 3000 new home buyers since its launch up to March 2012, and a further 8000 reservations for houses for sale have been made up to August 2012.

The economic climate has made it very challenging for first-time buyers to buy new homes because of the restricted access to mortgages, the high deposit amounts that are required to buy a property and also because of higher property prices.

The FirstBuy Scheme helps first-time buyers buy new homes for sale by offering an equity loan on the property which is backed by the Government and provided by the Government and by house builders. The scheme also means that buyers don't need to find a huge 20 per cent deposit to buy a house and buying a home is more affordable. The scheme has shown promising results with over 8000 new build homes reserved with the scheme so far during 2012.

Around GBP40 million will also be used to help house builders build further new build homes to help approximately 2,500 first-time buyers.

However, the extra funding comes as news that the NewBuy scheme that is also funded by the Government is not performing as well as it had initially been hoped. The NewBuy scheme was launched in March 2012 with initial figures of it benefiting 100,000 house buyers. However recent figures announced show that only 250 new homes have been bought through the scheme since its launch in March. It is recognised, however, that because a typical property sale will take up to six months to complete, and these figures are from March to June 2012 inclusive, the figure does not reflect the true volume of new homes sales and that more will come through during the second quarter of the year. The Home Builders Federation has reported that there has been a total of 1500 reservations on new homes through the NewBuy scheme and that a further 25,000 new homes have been built because of the scheme.

Notes to Editors:
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