HOUSEHOLDS with an income around £100,000 have received Scottish Government help to buy a new home, leading to calls for the system to be axed.
The Help to Buy scheme supported five households with incomes of £80,000 to £100,000 in 2018/19, and 109 with incomes of £60,000 and £80,000.
READ MORE: Help to buy scheme extended to 2021
The mean income of those benefitting from the scheme, which offers an interest-free stake of 15 per cent of the cost of a new build home, was £41,000.
Four-fifths of the 2,151 households getting Help to Buy last year were first-time buyers, and around the same proportion were aged 35 or under.
Scottish Labour MSP Pauline McNeill said: “Help to buy isn’t helping enough working-class young people, and is increasingly just a windfall for housing companies.
“Getting a foot on the housing ladder is harder than ever, with too many people on lower incomes caught up in a vicious cycle. They can’t afford a deposit or access social housing, so they rent privately whilst trying to save - but the rent is so high that they never put the money away.
“Labour will make ending the housing crisis our priority in government, finding new low-cost ways to home ownership by scrapping help to buy and replace it with a scheme targeted exclusively first-time buyers.”
LibDem housing spokesperson Caron Lindsay said: “People will be surprised to see households with an income of up to £100,000 accessing the SNP Government’s Help to Buy scheme. Households with this sort of income should be able to afford to buy a home without the government’s help.
READ MORE: New £150m loan scheme for first-time buyers
“If the system is imbalanced then the risk is that Help to Buy drives up prices while having little effect on supply.
“The Scottish Government needs to consider whether this is really the best use of its resources. We could do so much more for people on lower incomes.”
Housing Minister Kevin Stewart said: “First-time buyers that benefit the most through our shared equity schemes. Our reduced price cap of £200,000 means support is available for the purchase of more affordable properties.
“The Scottish Government’s Open Market Shared Equity scheme is available for buyers on low to moderate incomes - the average household income of buyers participating in this scheme in 2018-19 was £26,000.”
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