And DCLG confirmed that new housing supply was at its highest level since 2008 as a total of 319,000 additional homes across England have been added to in the two years from October 2010 to October 2012.
Eric Pickles, secretary of state for Communities and Local Government, said: “This government’s package of measures to boost the housing market is working with house building and housing supply on the up.
“The tough decisions we’ve taken to tackle the deficit are now delivering a sustainable increase in housing and providing real help to hard-working people.”
He added: “With over 10,000 reservations in four months it’s clear that the Help to Buy is working well.
“By dealing with the big challenges we are helping thousands of young people and families get on and move up the housing ladder and Britain is building again.”
More than 150,000 affordable homes have been made available in England in the last three years because of the wider affordable housing programmes and £19.5bn of public and private investment is being spent on affordable housing over the current Spending Review period.
Ben Thompson, managing director of Legal & General Mortgage Club, said: “There can be little doubt that Help to Buy has greatly assisted some of the recovery we have been seeing in the mortgage and housing markets.
“It is somewhat ironic that following five years of these markets being flat we already have noise about house price bubbles and so on.
“The recovery has been led by London and the South East in particular but not exclusively so and a number of regions have barely had a sniff of recovery since the downturn.”
Thompson added: “So the fine balance will be providing sufficient stimulus to ensure the housing market has properly and sustainably recovered, whilst ensuring that housing demand isn’t overly strong relative to supply.”
