<p>The completion deadline for the existing Help to Buy equity loan has been extended by a further two months to May 31.</p> <p>Homes England has granted the extra time for the build and sales completion of homes for which reservations took place under the current scheme before mid-December. </p> <p>But the government agency emphasised that every effort should be made to complete sales by March 31 and stressed that there would be no further extensions to the deadline. Therefore, housebuilders should “continue to build at pace”. </p> <p>This follows last month’s four week extension to the practical completion deadline, after Homes England said it would not implement the practical completion “Longstop” of February 28. This gave housebuilders more time to finish building homes under the existing Help to Buy.</p> <p> But since then, the Home Builders Federation said it had engaged further with the government and Homes England on the factors beyond housebuilders’ control impacting build programmes. These include Covid-related absenteeism, materials and product delays and weather disruption.</p> <p>HBF said that the number of transactions affected “would likely have been low” but for these, missing the deadline would have upset many buyers – especially those ineligible for the new iteration …