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There is bad news for housing market pessimists who claim Help To Buy is creating a bubble - official figures show it is a mere drop in the ocean in terms of impact on sales.

Only 7,313 homes have been sold thanks to HTB2 (the mortgage guarantee part of the scheme) and the vast majority were outside London, completely contradicting those pundits who suggested the initiative was fuelling the capital's rising prices.

The average value of each loan taken out under the HTB2 is just £136,742 (little more than half the average price of a home in England and Wales according to the Office for National Statistics) and the take-up of the scheme accounts for only one per cent of all mortgages taken out in the six month period under review for this part of Help To Buy.

Just five per cent of HTB2 homes were sold in the capital and only 14 per cent in the south east of England. More homes were sold in Orkney using the scheme than in Camden and Westminster combined.

Meanwhile, figures for the first part of Help to Buy - the equity loan scheme which applied to new-builds only - show that 20,548 new homes have been purchased this way since the scheme began in spring 2013.

In total, 27,861 homes have now been sold under the two parts of Help to Buy.

Under the equity loan scheme, buyers are able to buy a new-build home with a deposit of five per cent and can borrow up to 15 per cent of the property's value from the government.

Under the mortgage guarantee scheme, buyers can purchase any home up to the value of £600,000 and part of their loan is underwritten by the Treasury.

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