Almost 1,500 loans were agreed through the Government’s Help to Buy scheme in its first year in the West Midlands.
However, new data shows that people in some parts of the region were more than 20 times as likely to make the most of the interest-free loans than elsewhere.
Almost eight per cent of the 19,394 loans were handed out in this region, but while 18 out of every 10,000 people in Tamworth and Wrekin took advantage last year, only 0.8 per 10,000 from North Warwickshire did.
The Government said that 87.5 per cent of those to take advantage of the controversial scheme – designed to boost the housing market – were first-time buyers. The average loan was £36,999 and the average price paid for a property was £184,995, it added.
Meanwhile, it has been claimed the Government will enjoy a £4.5 billion boost as a result of a house price boom, which some have linked to the Help to Buy scheme.
John Fender, professor of macroeconomics at the University of Birmingham, said a year into the scheme he remains convinced it is not helping the housing market.
He said: “The basic problem is this pushes up house prices but doesn’t make any more houses available.
“If you make it easier for one person to buy a house, that means somebody else won’t be able to buy.
“You may see the success stories but you don’t see the stories where people would have been able to buy houses but the prices were pushed up and they were priced out of the market.”
Help to Buy offers lenders a taxpayer-backed guarantee on mortgages of up to 95 per cent of a property’s value.
The loans are available on properties costing up to £600,000, and the department for communities and local government said nationally 163 properties costing between £500,001 and the limit had been bought using Help to Buy funding.
In all, there were 1,456 loans given out in the West Midlands, including 216 in Birmingham alone, across the year.
That works out to 5.7 people per 10,000, which is the same ratio as Ƶ-wide data.
There is no limit on income to qualify for the Help to Buy scheme and national figures show, while 82 per cent of buyers had a household income of £60,000 or less, 583 had household earnings in excess of £100,000.
The government has now advanced £791 million worth of the loans, which are offered free of interest for the first five years after purchase and are only available on new-build properties.
The scheme was designed to kickstart the housing market and to allow those with small deposits access to home loans after the credit crunch reduced lenders’ appetite for risk, and 70 per cent of those taking an equity loan put down a deposit of five per cent or less – £9,250 on the median property price.
Matthew Pointon, property economist at Capital Economics, said: “With the supply of homes on the market still low compared to demand, house prices and transactions will rise further over the coming months. But fears that central London’s boom must now ripple out across the country look, so far, unfounded.”
Meanwhile, research shows Help to Buy could deliver the Government a financial boost because of a clause allowing it to share the cash from homes which are sold on at a profit.
Help to Buy hands buyers 20 per cent of a home’s value – and when the house is sold with the loan still active, the Treasury takes 20 per cent of any increase over the years.
And with house prices rising, the government will make a 59 per cent return on its loans over the scheme’s lifetime, researchers claim.
That means by 2020, when the scheme is due to end, the Treasury will have handed out enough loans to net itself £4.5 billion.
How Help to buy works
* Launched in March 2013 to help first-time buyers of new-build homes who can’t afford a deposit
* Buyers stump up as little as five per cent on a mortgage which carries a 25 per cent deposit
* The Treasury lends the other 20 per cent, interest-free for five years
* If house is sold after rising in value, Treasury wins 20 per cent of the difference – but if it has fallen in value, the Treasury pays 20 per cent of the difference instead
* A second scheme, dubbed Help to Buy 2, is also available and involves state guarantees on loans for any type of property
* Neither can be used for interest-only mortgages or buy-to-lets
