Your message & thoughts on developers still advertising Help to Buy a week before the deadline

I'm still amazed that they have not brought in a robust, widely available alternative to help to buy with it ending in a few days. This is still needed in my opinion, and could leave some buyers short. Boris banged on about rewarding key workers and first time buyers with the First Homes Scheme, but we're still waiting for it to be widely available. There is still time, you need to have your application in by 31/10/2022, the deadline for completion is still in 2023.

Whilst the deadline to apply is the end of October the mortgages don't have to complete till 31st March 2023. So on paper it seems acceptable to still promote this service however my concern is how many new build developers are missing their targets at the moment and the impact this could have. If the homebuyers only way to purchase a property is through the homebuyers scheme you could find that you've committed a lot of money to deposits, fees and charges and if the builder misses the deadline then they will end up with no house and no means to purchase a property.

I can understand why developers are still advertising to those few people left who may be ready to go. However, in my personal opinion I do not see one week as enough time to get everything in place. Yes there are still opportunities for FTBs to get the H2BEL scheme, not as many lenders can offer the mortgages now as before but on the whole lenders have done very well to keep their residential mortgage products broad during this turmoil its mostly the depth of products we have lost. I do think it's possible and would be a wise decision, it’s a hard time for many borrowers out there but especially first time buyers who have not had it easy now for a number of years so where they can be helped they should be. As much as I would love to say that the market focuses on H2BEL it would just not be true. I have read studies that suggest there are 28 million dwellings in the uk as of 2022 with 8.7 million of these being privately rented. Taking into account that a number of these properties will be social housing and a number will be main residences owned outright it shows why lenders put such a huge focus on their buy to let propositions as ultimately its what the majority of their clients want and where they make their business. I think schemes such as H2BEL come as a secondary item to ease their conscious at times when its easy for them to offer this.

It is absolutely the right thing to do for developers to continue to advertise and inform buyers about help to buy properties before the deadline closes, no matter how tight that may be. If a first-time buyer still has the opportunity to buy a new home with financial assistance that door should be held open right up until it becomes impossible for them to do so. The alternative in my opinion is an unknown, high rate, economically convulsive dystopian future where there are very few if any alternative assistance schemes for first time buyers at anywhere near the level of direct financial support provided by help to buy. Coupled with some mortgage rates being literally twice as high as they were a few months ago, having a stab at beating the deadline sounds a lot more appealing to me. For first time buyers that are not registered on the scheme already or don’t have a mortgage offer already, it is highly likely that they have missed the boat for now. It is imperative, for the sake of those buyers that miss out in October and the hundreds of thousands more looking to buy their first home in the near future, that the scheme is extended or replaced with something similar or better. Without first time buyers the housing market will seize up as the large pool of potential homeowners isn’t there to inject liquidity into the bottom layer of the property pyramid. Without that liquidity, sales transactions will decrease sharply which impacts the construction industry, property developers, construction professional services, tradespeople, real estate agents and many more secondary and tertiary stakeholders in the primary real estate and related industries. Furthermore, with mortgage rates likely to hover around the mark they are at or increase slightly over time, an enforced shift may take us from a nation of home owners to a nation of home renters. Many young people and first-time buyers will have no choice, particularly key workers such as teachers, nurses, carers and the emergency services who simply will not be able to afford to buy a home in the area that they live and work in. As we lurch towards 2023 with a 65% increase decade on decade of families living in temporary accommodation, currently at 96,060 families, which doesn’t include the estimated 8,000 to 10,000 rough sleepers in the UK, the answer to the housing crisis is clear. We must build more new homes for ownership, more new homes for rent and more Council owned affordable, sustainable homes to reduce the number of homeless families and people on their own in temporary accommodation and sleeping rough across the UK. To do this we must have Government schemes that support and assist young people, first time buyers, key workers, low-income families and the elderly to buy and rent warm, safe homes. Without help to buy or something very similar we are condemning the next generation to very few opportunities to buy their own home with the added unwanted bonus of sky-high costs just to rent their own home. We are sleepwalking towards a ‘no help’ to buy scheme whilst we change housing ministers like most people change their underpants and as usual the only ones that will suffer are the ones that need help the most.