“… Persimmon is one of the main beneficiaries of the taxpayer-funded help-to-buy scheme, first launched by George Osborne in 2013. When the scheme was extended in 2017, a report by Morgan Stanley found that the £10bn of taxpayers’ cash had mainly benefited housebuilders, rather than buyers, by pushing up prices.
Persimmon said it was in an “excellent market position” ahead of the key spring selling season, despite “increased levels of uncertainty” due to Brexit. It had £1.39bn of forward sales reserved at the end of last year, up 3%. Rival Taylor Wimpey was also upbeat about its outlook last week.
Both housebuilders are more cautious when it comes to buying land. Persimmon said it was taking a “selective approach” and Taylor Wimpey revealed that it had walked away from or was trying to renegotiate 2,000 plot purchases – amounting to about 11% of the total land it bought last year. …”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/15/persimmon-profits-help-to-buy-prices
East Devon Watch 
Told you so. I said in comments when help to buy was announced that the consequence would be for it to prop up prices or raise them further and effectively act as a taxpayer subsidy to developer profits – and now this has been shown to be the case.
In addition, as the Owl has previously reported, Help to Buy has largely been used by well off people who could afford the house with it rather than by first-time buyers struggling to get onto the housing ladder.
So in effect, the government has used tax payers money to increase still further the already-obscene profits of developers (who are often donors to the Tory party) and to subsidise the housing of the well off (probably Tory voters). Please tell me that this is morally not corrupt, because it certainly appears that way to me.
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