If this situation continues, I’d put money on them doing it again.
Done wrong, though, and we could end up with Help to Buy 2.0, which would be a boon to housebuilders by propping up house prices and to banks by making sure that people could get mortgages but only perpetuate a cycle of precarity – of boom and bust – which exists in Britain’s housing market. Now that higher rates are starting to feed through into the balance sheets of builders, the question is whether the Government will look at the picture and decide that it’s time to get behind properly affordable social housing again. They’d be wise to do this, social housing is a national asset that not only boosts housebuilders but generates revenue through social rents and reduces the amount of housing benefit being paid to private landlords.