'Help to Buy' – should you take the offer?

George Osborne’s £130bn ‘Help to Buy’ scheme is the latest move by the government to get the housing market moving. It may well succeed, but at what future price? Piper Terrett looks at whether it's worth taking the government up on its offer.

George Osborne's £130bn Help to Buy' scheme is the latest move by the government to get the housing market moving. It may well succeed, but at what future price? Although the full details have yet to be disclosed, there are two basic parts to this scheme.

The first is a shared-equity programme, which, for three years from 1 April, will be open to buyers of new-build properties worth up to £600,000. Homebuyers with a 5% deposit could benefit from a government loan for up to 20% of the property's value. That leaves them having to raise just 75% from commercial lenders at what the government hopes will be competitive rates.

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Piper Terrett is a financial journalist and author. Piper graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1997 and worked for Germaine Greer and for Adam Faith’s Money Channel before embarking on a career in business journalism. 

She has worked for most top financial titles, including Investors Chronicle, Shares magazine, Yahoo! Finance and MSN Money. She lectures part-time at London Metropolitan University and is the author of four books.