It let me buy a property which I wouldn't be able to without HTB, therefore your statement is objectively wrong.
> And commuting towns aren’t that cheaper either
Plenty of 2 bed houses in daily commuting distance for £250k - easily affordable on a London wage.
Really, HTB should not have had a restriction on new builds. It's laughable because the restriction would make sense if the Gov was allowing anyone to actually build new properties.
I think you're FYIGM'ing. Idk where you're finding these decent 2 bed "houses" (I think you mean flats) in London for "250k". Hell even a 2 bed flat is mostly around the 350-400k mark in most of London, unless you want to raise your family in Croydon or something lol
This isn’t because of the deposit but because HTB essentially allows you to buy a property for double the price in London.
Most people couldn’t afford a 500K property not because they can’t save up £50K but because they won’t have a salary north of £100K for the bank to loan them the rest as lenders cap the loan amount at 4-4.5 times your annual salary.
So now people that earn £50K can buy a property that only people that earn £100-120K could regardless of their deposits.
Possibly you're taking the wrong counterfactual here?
"If I hadn't HTB but everyone else did" vs "If no-one had HTB".
It's possible you're quite right about the first, but it tells us little about the second. Possibly in the presence of HTB, prices just rise again until they reach their equilibrium of just-barely-affordable.
If they do pay it back they do it by remortgaging so the builders win, the banks win, the tax payer pays for any HTB loans that aren’t repaid and the tax payer gets shafted with higher housing costs.
For a £500K flat you need a £50K deposit but you also need a household income of £100K or more to be able to borrow £450K as banks cap the maximum amount they’ll loans at 4-4.5 of your annual income.
So HTB didn’t only increase the prices it also pushed people to take on loans that they normally would not be able to afford.