Help to Buy jump

Record numbers of buyers snapped up newly built homes in June, using the government's Help to Buy scheme.

The month saw 4,745 taking advantage of a state-provided interest free loan, provided under Help to Buy, to boost their deposits.

More than 3,800 of them were first time buyers, stepping onto the housing ladder.

Housebuilders have been cashing in, with Barratt Developments reporting a 45 per cent jump in profits this morning, to £565m.

Higher prices have been helping the builders as well: the price of the average Barratt home has risen by nearly 9 per cent in a year.

More than 56,000 buyers have completed purchases using Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme since it launched in April, 2013, on £12bn worth of homes.

A similar number have benefited from the scheme to assist buyers of older homes, called Help to Buy Mortgage Guarantee.

The Treasury put the total helped by various programmes so far at 120,000.

Housing starts down

Shelter has described figures showing showing a drop in new homes started as shocking and worrying.

But the housing minister, Brandon Lewis, said the government had "got the country building again" and was "delivering the homes that hard-working people rightly deserve".

Shelter's concern arose from official housing statistics for England which showed the number of foundations laid down fell to 33,280 in the three months to June, a fall of 14% compared with the previous quarter.

The annual figure, comparing the latest 12 months to the year before, was 1% lower at 136,320.

However, the figures also show that the number of new homes actually completed over the latest 12 month period rose by 15% to 131,060.

The National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, said the news was encouraging.

Before the election David Cameron predicted that we would be building 200,000 homes a year by 2017.