Help to Buy offers benefits but it's hard work

We have seen a big impact on the level
of work driven by the government’s Help to Buy scheme. At my firm, we have recognised it as a growth area and put a strategy in place to expand and double the size of our new homes team in Portsmouth and Southampton.

Of the 17,000 homes bought nationally with the Help to Buy scheme, 15,000 of those were new-builds using equity loans. In the recent Budget,
the chancellor extended the scheme to 2020 because of its growing popularity, and we
have certainly seen this in
the Solent region.

It has sparked a revival of the new-home specialism, which has been in severe decline during the recession. Many expert property lawyers I’ve come across suffered redundancy then retrained in other legal specialisms.

Firms have also faced
years without trainee intakes
in property and homes departments because it’s not
a path newly qualified solicitors would choose to take with the seemingly limited career opportunities in the future.However, that is about to change. We have acknowledged this trend and I have just taken on my first trainee in quite
some time, which has been
an exciting development.

Before jumping on the Help to Buy bandwagon, legal firms must recognise is that this is not easy work. You have to be incredibly efficient, process-driven and organised. There is a lot of additional paperwork involved in dealing with Help to Buy agents and there are strict deadlines that must be met both to comply with government
rules and to meet building company deadlines.

There are benefits in this new specialised field of practice but it’s no piece of cake and can only be carried out by experienced lawyers with a lot of training.

Help to Buy critics have blamed its success for the surge in UK house prices (the Office for National Statistics reported and increase of 6.8 per cent in the 12 months leading up to January) but I wouldn’t necessarily agree. The figure was inflated by a 13.2 per cent house price rise in the property hot spot of London and the south-east, and three-quarters of the homes included in the national figure are outside that area.

We need new homes, and the only way to stop prices rising is to meet demand with supply. Provided builders can keep pace, the prices won’t be forced up.Current construction activity levels are meeting those not
seen since 2007 and there has been a significant jump in the value of shares for key house building firms. There is no doubt that Help
to Buy has generated these opportunities, which can only be good for the industry and
the economy. SJ

Karen Webb is partner and head of residential property and new homes at Coffin Mew