Best places to use Help To Buy identified by new analysis

New analysis by credit and comparison service Totally Money has revealed the districts where the controversial Help To Buy initiative is most used to purchase homes.

Central Bedfordshire is the top district to purchase a property through H2B schemes in the UK, with Wakefield the top city. 

Through Help To Buy purchasers can receive an equity loan of up to 20 per cent (or 40 per cent in London boroughs) of the house’s total value, making it possible to purchase a home with a five per cent deposit. The required deposit can then be saved with the help of high-interest ISAs. 

Totally Money researched a number of factors in each district across the UK to determine a ranking, including the number of equity loans utilised in each region (per capita), the number of H2B ISA property completions and the average amount left to pay after government help, based on average property prices. 

The research used government data to compare every district of the UK, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Of the 388 official government regions in the UK, the Help to Buy hotspots were:

1. Central Bedfordshire – The Eastern district came up trumps, with a high level of equity loans (1,710) and 245 properties successfully bought using a H2B ISA;

2. Chorley – The Lancashire market town came in second position with a low average property cost (£182,818); 

3. Cheshire West and Cheshire – The area scored particularly highly in terms of the number of help-to-buy ISA property completions where it came out top in the whole of the UK, with 495 residents purchasing homes utilising this scheme.
 

The most buyer-friendly cities were revealed to be: 

1. Wakefield – with 610 residents purchase new homes between December 2015 and March 2017;

2. Hull – the low average property cost (£134,452) means that the five per cent deposit required is the cheapest of any city at just £6,722;

3. Salford – with 437 residents successfully purchasing homes utilising the H2B ISAs in recent times and a good level of equity loans boosting its ranking.