Following the market disruption caused by funding for the Scottish Government’s hugely successful Help to Buy shared equity scheme for this financial year running out in July, Philip Hogg (right), Chief Executive of trade body Homes for Scotland responded to the criteria changes announced today by saying:

“Given the scheme generated nearly 5000 reservations and sales in just ten months before demand exhausted the budget allocation for this financial year, this interruption has resulted in significant business uncertainty as the industry awaited the Scottish Government’s next move.

“This adjustment to a £250,000 maximum house price for 2015/16 transactions does, however, provide some clarity to both builders and buyers.  Still covering the vast majority of the market, it will also ensure that the limited funds are targeted to help more of those most in need, however, we still suspect that even with this change the £100m budget will be insufficient to last the full year.

“With demand for the scheme proven without doubt, we continue to press for an increased budget for next year in order to avoid a repeat of the stop-start experience of this year which seriously impacted business planning and caused anxiety and uncertainty for home buyers.

“We therefore hope that Help to Buy (Scotland), along with specific help for SMEs to enable them to build more homes under the scheme, will be obvious beneficiaries for the extra £125million housing investment announced in last week’s draft Budget.”

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