Osborne says the scheme, which closes Friday, ‘helped hundreds of thousands of families’, but critics argue it was ‘only a gimmick’
George Osborne’s Help to Buy scheme officially shuts this Friday, a little over a decade after the then chancellor launched it with the aim of revitalising what was a sluggish UK property market.
The scheme granted 375,654 interest-free equity loans for the purchase of new-build properties, according to the latest figures which cover until the end of last September, with 84% of applicants first-time buyers. On average they borrowed £63,000, on a typical purchase price of £273,500, with a total value of £23.6bn lent out.
