People on bumper salaries are exploiting the Government’s Help to Buy scheme
The £7billion plan is designed to help first-time homebuyers secure a mortgage, with deposits of just 5 per cent.
PEOPLE on bumper salaries are exploiting the Government’s Help to Buy scheme.
The £7billion plan is meant to help first-time homebuyers secure a mortgage.
Almost 135,000 properties have been bought under the scheme since it was launched by George Osborne in 2013.
But four in ten recipients were earning more than £50,000 a year, while one in ten was on at least £80,000.
The also reported that 5,000 were on more than £100,000.
The revelations come in the week that Theresa May gave the scheme a further £10billion boost.
The equity loan scheme allows house-hunters to buy new-build homes of up to £600,000 using deposits of only five per cent.
The Government lends up to another 20 per cent interest-free for five years, or 40 per cent in London.
When the house is sold the Government takes the same percentage of the sale price that it loaned.
But Sam Bowman, of the Adam Smith Institute think tank, said: “Help to buy is like throwing petrol on a bonfire.”
He said it pushed prices up and helped people who would have been able to buy anyway.