She said: “My ministers will continue to promote the Help to Buy and Right to Buy schemes to support home ownership.”
In her annual address the Queen said only 19% of mortgage applications under the Help to Scheme had originated from London and the South East.
These advances were for homes worth on average less than £152,000 dispelling fears of a ‘housing bubble’.
Over 33,000 households reserved a new-build home through the Help to Buy equity loan scheme in its first 13 months, 87% of which were sales to first-time buyers.
And 7,300 households had used the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme by the end of March, of which 80% were for first-time buyers.
The renewed confidence in the equity loan and mortgage guarantee schemes runs contrary to Clegg’s statement that the government would ‘pare back’ the initiatives if the Bank believed they would threaten the economic recovery.
Further commitments to help maintain the recovery of the housing market came in the form of supply-side initiatives.
A £525m Builders’ Finance Fund was announced which is targeted to deliver up to 15,000 homes on small sites, planning obligations on small developments will be curbed and a £150m repayable fund for custom-built homes will be launched.
