Between the launch of the Help to Buy scheme on 1 April 2013 and 30 September 2018, over 195,000 properties have been purchased with an equity loan, with the total value of these equity loans amounting to £10.66bn and the value of properties sold under the scheme totalling £49.89bn, according to new data.

The Housing Statistical Release published today by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government revealed that a majority of the home purchases in the Help to Buy scheme were made by first-time buyers, accounting for 158,013 (81 per cent) of total purchases.

According to the report, the mean purchase price of a property bought under the scheme was £255,542, with buyers using a mean equity loan of £54,630.

Furthermore, in London, the maximum equity loan was increased from 20 per cent to 40 per cent from February 2016, and since then to 30 September 2018, there were 10,829 completions in London, of which 9,091 were made with an equity loan higher than 20 per cent. Overall in London, 15,056 properties were purchased with an equity loan.

The research highlighted that the scheme has primarily supported the purchase of houses, with flats accounting for just 17 per cent of all transactions up to 30 September 2018. House purchases accounted for 84 per cent of the transactions, and was split among detached, semi-detached and terraced houses.

First-time buyers purchased more flats, terraced and semi-detached properties, but fewer detached houses than existing owners.

Commenting on the data, Project Etopia founder Joseph Daniels said: “Help to Buy has been a staggeringly popular initiative, crashing through this colossal milestone in only five years.

“The scheme has come under fire for allegedly inflating property prices but the government has already called a halt to the scheme, announcing in October that it will end for all but first-time buyers from 2021. There will also be regional price caps from 2021 that will take some of the heat out of those markets before Help to Buy finally closes in 2023.”

However, Daniels argued that this presents an opportunity for policy makers to focus their attention “elsewhere”.

“The country needs to get the balance right between new building and demand-side measures like Help to Buy, which simply improve the financial position of prospective buyers. If prices are being inflated, that would make the climb facing first-time buyers an even steeper one with much of this cash ending up in the pockets of developers.

“What the UK now needs are policies that focus on encouraging capital to continue to flow into the building of new homes rather than just creating an artificially robust market for them. Improved incentives for the modular market presents the only realistic strategy for meeting the government’s housing targets,” he concluded.

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