Working Families Shut Out Of Help-To-Buy

A third of working private tenants cannot afford to take advantage of three government flagship schemes to help them own a home, a study by the housing charity Shelter reveals. The help-to-buy, starter homes and shared ownership schemes are too expensive for more than 830,000 of the “treadmill families” for whom they were intended, according to an analysis of the official family resources survey and data on households with below average income. Help-to-buy allows people to buy with a 5% deposit and a government equity loan of 20% of the price, while starter homes are sold at a 20% discount to under-40s. Shared ownership allows them to buy 25-75% of a property and pay rent on the rest. Read more on the Times website.