The Help to Buy equity loan scheme is to be extended and will run until 2020, chancellor George Osborne has announced.
So far the scheme has helped more than 25,000 households to buy or reserve a new-build home, and a further £6 billion is to be invested to help 120,000 more households purchase a newly-built property. The Help to Buy mortgage guarantee is unaffected by this change.
According to the chancellor, research shows that the Help to Buy equity loan scheme currently supports up to 30 per cent of new build homes in England, and extending it will provide greater certainty to housing developers so they can invest in building more new homes.
The chancellor also set out ambitious plans to invest up to £200 million in a major new development around the high speed rail station in Ebbsfleet in Kent, which is only 19 minutes from Central London. Up to 15,000 new homes are to be built on existing brownfield land, including former industrial sites and a disused quarry.
Although the area has long been identified as having great development potential, investment and progress have been stalled for decades. Because of this, the government wants to create a powerful new body – similar to what happened in Docklands in the 1980s – to really drive and promote the area, co-ordinate investment from government and solve the issues that have held back development.
It is a going to be a “Garden City” Development Corporation, with a mandate to build spacious, attractive, high quality places to live – modelled on popular garden ci
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