Fact check: Help To Buy scheme has had just 124 claims a week since 2017

A social media post from Fine Gael said: “Help to Buy is helping 500 people every week buy their first home.”

Evaluation

Official statistics recorded by the Revenue Commissioners show that while there were around 500 applications a week for the Help To Buy incentive scheme in September 2024, these included some made well before a person has decided to buy a house.

When it comes to applications by people ready to purchase a property, the figure was 175 per week for September. Data since the scheme’s inception in 2017 shows the average number of claims a week is 124.

The facts

The Help To Buy (HTB) incentive was launched on January 1 2017 and will run to December 31 2029, after it was extended in the most recent Budget. The scheme, which covers new-build and self-built properties costing less than 500,000 euro, allows first-time buyers up to 10% of the purchase price as a refund of the tax they have paid in the previous four years.

From the time it was introduced until the end of September 2024, 118,080 applications for HTB had been made. Of these 1,702 were retrospective for a period in 2016. The 116,378 remaining applications have been made over the course of 404 weeks, which breaks down as an average of 288 per week.

Yet a flat average does not account for the incentive’s current popularity. Monthly figures from Revenue show that there were 2,213 HTB applications in September 2024, which averages to 516 a week. Some 1,961 applications were made in August, with more than that figure recorded in every preceding month of 2024, to a high of 6,654 in January.

However, applications to HTB are not an indicator that a house has been purchased. A successful application gives compliant taxpayers a summary of the maximum relief available to them, but it is only when an applicant moves to purchase a property that the HTB process turns their application into a claim.

To the end of September 2024, the 118,080 total applications made have resulted in 51,474 claims, of which 1,076 were not approved. While 1,472 of the total claims were retrospective, it is not known how many of the non-approvals were.

If 50,398 approved claims were spread evenly across the full 404 weeks the scheme has been running, that would result in 124 a week on average. Looking at only 2024 data, there were 752 claims in September – or 175 per week.

More than one individual can be associated with a claim, but an analysis of the figures suggests that would still equate to fewer than 500 people per week.

Data provided by Revenue to the PA news agency covering the period of July 1st, 2020, to October 19th, 2024, which has not been made publicly available, shows that in this 224-week period, 32,062 HTB claims were made by a total of 58,505 applicants.

This represents an average of 1.8 people per claim. Therefore, 175 claims per week would represent 315 people utilising HTB for a purchase or to finance a self-built home.

When asked by PA how it had arrived at the figure of 500 people per week, Fine Gael cited figures from the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) on mortgage drawdowns that showed 25,591 first-time buyers getting mortgages in 2023, averaging 492 per week. However, this is a total of first-time buyers, not exclusively those using the HTB incentive.

More recent figures on mortgage drawdowns from the BPFI cover the second quarter of 2024. These show that first-time buyers took out 6,300 mortgages during the 13 weeks of April to June – 485 mortgages a week, on average. However, only 2,404 of these mortgages were for new properties. B

ecause the HTB incentive does not cover second-hand homes, this equates to around 185 first-time buyer mortgages a week that could have gained HTB assistance.

The BPFI has also released figures for mortgage drawdowns in the third quarter of 2024 that were not publicly available when the original claim was made. In this quarter, 2,489 mortgages were drawn down by first-time buyers, around 190 a week.

Fine Gael added: “The Help To Buy scheme has assisted almost 50,000 first-time buyers since its introduction by Fine Gael. While not all first-time buyers apply for the scheme, it is being availed of by a significant number of first-time buyers across the country.”