Developers Launch Initiatives for House Buyers

With the housing market starting to show further signs of recovery, developers have started launching their own sales initiatives. Along with government schemes such as Help to Buy, these are designed to kick-start their sales, especially amongst first-time buyers.

Attracting New-Build Sales

The housing market, particularly the new-build sector, struggled during the recession, with many sites put on hold. As the market begins to pick up, developers are looking at new ways of attracting potential buyers to their sites. Many of their incentives are aimed at first-time buyers, who are needed to help build up the market from the bottom.

Some house builders are offering their own 5% deposit schemes in a similar way to Help to Buy. They will then finance a 20% equity loan for the buyer with the same type of features, including five years with no interest. These are often aimed at lower earners who?ve struggled to get on the housing ladder over recent years. Many developers are also giving priority to those already living in the local area who are considering buying their first property, which could be a small town house with a Juliet balcony.

Government Schemes

With the equity loan element of the Help to Buy scheme now a year old, the number of developers registering sites with the scheme is increasing. So far it has been used to finance over 17,000 home purchases across the country. 80% of these are from first-time buyers and 77% of sales were outside of the South East. This is set to rise further following the announcement in the Budget that it will be extended until 2020.

Following the success of this programme of help for consumers and the housing market, an additional scheme targeting Armed Forces personnel launched at the beginning of April. This has traditionally been a group of people that has struggled financially to afford their own property, especially with frequent house moves. They will now be able to borrow up to half of their salary to help with a property purchase. They can take out a loan up to ?25,000 to put towards a deposit, which can then be repaid over a period of 10 years. The scheme is to initially run for three years.

With an increasing number of incentives for house buyers, it is hoped that this will give the housing market an additional boost.