Higher-income households benefited most from Help to Buy, thinktank finds

Higher-income households were the biggest beneficiaries of George Osborne’s Help to Buy mortgage schemes, introduced in the 2010s, according to an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) thinktank.

Launched by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in 2013, Help to Buy involved two separate schemes aimed at making home ownership more achievable in a period of rapid house price growth.

The first was taxpayer-backed loans to reduce the deposit buyers needed. The second was a mortgage guarantee scheme, covering part of lenders’ potential losses on high loan-to-value mortgages.

Both applied to homes worth up to £600,000 and by 2014-15 they supported about a fifth of first-time buyer purchases.

However, using a new approach based on survey data and local property prices, the IFS suggests much of the benefit went to higher earners who would eventually have been able to buy a home anyway – particularly those living outside London and south-east England, where property was less expensive.

Bee Boileau, a research economist at the IFS and a co-author of the briefing, said: “Help to Buy policies can help first-time buyers get on the housing ladder, in theory, but can also push up house prices and require the government to assume the risk on loans that the private sector is not otherwise willing to make.

“Our research indicates that the Help to Buy schemes introduced in 2013 had the largest impact – in terms of making more homes affordable – on higher-income households.”

The report adds: “Since these individuals would normally be expected to be able to save for a minimum deposit quite quickly even without Help to Buy, it is likely that these schemes accelerated their first home purchase by a few years rather than making the difference between becoming a homeowner or not in the longer term.”

The analysis suggests the mortgage guarantee scheme had “limited effects on affordability”, as buyers were still constrained by the maximum multiple of their income they could borrow.

The loan scheme was “more important for almost all households” in improving the affordability of local properties. However, it had a much narrower scope as it only applied to new-build properties, leaving it “muted in effect”, according to the IFS.

The two schemes had little effect on social mobility, the thinktank suggests. Boileau said if future governments wanted to tackle inequality, they could target help at lower-income households, but warned that could mean the taxpayer taking on more risk.

Help to Buy had been criticised by many experts for inflating prices without boosting housing supply: a report by the House of Lords built environment committee in 2022 suggested that the money spent on the scheme “would be better spent on increasing housing supply”.

A version of the mortgage guarantee scheme was reintroduced in 2021 and made permanent by Labour last year, aimed at ensuring 95% mortgages remain available.

The Tories’ housing secretary, James Cleverly, defended Help to Buy, saying: “The previous Conservative government’s Help to Buy schemes gave many thousands of people the chance to realise the dream of homeownership. Under Labour, in contrast, things are getting harder and harder for first-time buyers, with housebuilding in sharp decline and stamp duty fees soaring.”