This included 328,346 first-time buyer households.
The Exchequer made a return of £1.24bn on the Help to Buy scheme loans – last year alone was £218m.
By March 2026, 213,713 loans had been fully repaid, representing more than 55% of all loan accounts.
In sum, returns on the Help to Buy equity loan book and the interest income derived from the scheme to date mean the Exchequer has so far seen around £1.74bn of profit, according to data from Homes England.
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Calls for a replacement equity loan scheme
The Home Builders Federation (HBF) said it had called on the government to introduce a replacement equity loan scheme.
Help to Buy has recently been extended in Wales, which the government estimated would help up to 400 more households.
The HBF said it provided suggestions around what a new equity loan scheme could look like – including being purely focused on first-time buyers and requiring a developer financial contribution to reduce the cost to the taxpayer.
It is not the first time that calls to extend the scheme have been made, with calls for a mixture of private and public stakes in the scheme.
A lack of affordable mortgage lending and economic concerns are suppressing demand for new homes, thus constraining housing supply, said the HBF.
Lenders have since sought to widen their low-deposit and near-100% loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages.
Neil Jefferson, chief executive of the HBF, said: “The lack of government support amidst a dearth of affordable mortgage lending is suppressing effective demand for new homes, preventing young people from getting on the housing ladder and thwarting attempts to increase the supply of new private and affordable housing.
“Help to Buy supported a third of a million first-time buyer households into homeownership, helped double housing supply, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and has delivered a £1.25bn return for taxpayers on repaid equity loans.
“If government wants to see housing supply increase, it has to tackle the dual constraints of a lack of viability due to the overly burdensome level of taxation and policy costs levied on development, and the suppressed level of demand that is preventing investment in new sites.
“Publishing the government’s evaluation of Help to Buy, which was completed earlier this year, would help to set the record straight on the performance of Help to Buy and may assist in paving the way for a new support scheme for first-time buyers.”
