Metropolitan Thames Valley has urged the government to extend the current Help to Buy scheme, due to delays caused by the pandemic.
Kush Rawal, director of residential investment at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, has written to the Housing Minister Chris Pincher on the subject.
The current Help to Buy completion deadline is 28 February 2021. The new scheme will just be for first-time buyers and will be subject to regional price caps.
Kush Rawal, director of residential investment at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, said: “A number of our customers are set to lose out on their dream homes solely due to unavoidable delays to construction as a direct consequence of the pandemic. And they are not alone.
“Across England, a large number of buyers are facing a similarly desperate situation whereby their dream of homeownership will be lost if the government does not extend the current Help to Buy completion deadline of 28 February 2021 for new build homes.
“The construction sector is just one of many that has felt the enormous effects of Covid-19 over the last 10 months, with completions for new homes inevitably delayed due to site closures, reduced teams on site to comply with social distancing, and issues with supplies.
“We are therefore asking the government to show flexibility, as it has done throughout the pandemic, and provide an extension to the existing Help to Buy scheme to guarantee that transactions on new build properties that have progressed to the point of completion will go ahead as planned.
“If this technical change is not made, first-time buyers across the country may see their purchases collapse, incur additional costs or even abandon purchases, which would be bad news for them, housing providers and the wider market. There’s still time to act, so we look forward to working with the government to resolve this issue.”
