After an extremely difficult few years, the new build homes market is starting to pick up. The financial crash of  2007/08 had a devastating impact on the house building industry and its ability to build and sell homes.

The industry lost upwards of 40 per cent of its employees, whilst new build homes supply dropped to peacetime levels not seen since the 1920s.

Against a need to build over 220,000 new homes a year, barely over 100,000 were built in the years just after the crash. This crept up to around 115,000 last year.

The main constraint on supply has been the scale of deposits required to obtain a mortgage – 20 per cent or more. Whilst many people may have been able to service the actual mortgage payments, in many cases the monthly payments were similar to or lower than the cost of renting, they simply did not have the deposits required to secure a mortgage.

Deposit requirements of £25,000 plus are well out of the reach of most, and well above the lending limits of the bank of mum and dad. As a result, with people unable to buy, builders have been unable to build.

In an attempt to increase new build homes supply, we have over the past few years seen a number of demand side support measures launched by Government. As well as the obvious social benefits of providing more homes, Government also recognises the economic ones increasing construction activity can bring.

Since they came to power, the coalition has supported schemes including FirstBuy, a shared equity scheme, and the Newbuy mortgage guarantee scheme. All were delivering sales, and most importantly proved such schemes could work, but the launch of Help to Buy has been a game changer.

In its first six months alone, it delivered over 15,000 reservations and it is clear that Help to Buy has the potential to use up its allocation of 74,000 sales in advance of the three year deadline.

The Government schemes are now delivering!

It is interesting to look at the geographic spread of sales so far. The scheme is being utilised by homebuyers in all areas of the country, releasing the pent up demand we knew was there. The only place where take up maybe has not been as strong is in London, which in many areas is driven by very different issues compared to the rest of the UK.

The Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme, allied to a general improvement in the mortgage market is resulting in a big increase in house building activity. Builders are speeding up the build rate on sites already underway and looking to start new sites sooner.

The early introduction of the Mortgage Guarantee part of Help to Buy promises to increase market activity still further, though the actual impact it will have on the new build market is unclear at this point in time.

What is clear is that the scheme has the potential to significantly increase the overall number of transactions in the housing market generally. As a part of the wider market, new build transactions should increase too.

We have heard a lot about the potential of the Mortgage Guarantee scheme to lead to a housing bubble. Whilst I think such talk is premature, outside of certain parts of London there is little evidence as yet of excessive house price inflation, it is quite right that Government has asked the Bank of England to keep an eye on the impact of the scheme. As developers we need market stability to plan our businesses and increase output and do not want to see sharp price rises.

To ensure any market recovery is sustained, Government also needs to manage how all these support measures are withdrawn and ensure that the market can continue to grow without them before doing so.

There is a still a long way to go before we get anywhere near building the number of homes the country needs, and indeed there are some other constraints to get over before we can do that, not least the planning system. But after an extremely challenging period, developers are feeling somewhat more positive about the market than for quite a while.