Andy Burnham announced Your First Home on 26 September. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says the scheme is expected to support first time buyers in England with a 2.5 per cent deposit and a 20 per cent government equity loan, to buy a newly built home from a developer signed up to it. On those figures, the buyer's mortgage would cover the remaining 77.5 per cent.
The loan would carry an initial interest free period, and the department says buyers could save hundreds of pounds a month compared with a 95 per cent mortgage. It has not said how long that period lasts or what charges follow it. The household income cap and the local property price caps will be set out at the Budget on 28 October, where the Chancellor, John Healey, will announce the "costs and implementation timelines". Developers will be expected to contribute when they sign up, but the amount has not been published. ITV reported that the government says the scheme will be funded by reprioritising existing budgets, with registration opening by the end of 2026.
Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State for Housing and Planning, set out the same terms in a written statement to the Commons on 12 October, repeated in the Lords by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage the next day. It says the scheme is aimed at first time buyers who cannot rely on financial help from family, and gives no figures for the caps, the interest free period or the cost. The department is led by the Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner.
The department gives two aims. One is to tackle the deposit barrier for first time buyers "who would be unable to afford their first home otherwise". The other is to stimulate a new build market that it says faces headwinds from international economic pressures and rising construction costs.
Eleven days before the announcement, on 15 September, the same department published its evaluation of Help to Buy, the equity loan scheme that ran in England from 2013 to 2023. More than 387,000 homes were bought through it, about 328,000 of them by first time buyers, backed by £24.7 billion of equity loans. The loans were interest free for five years. After that, buyers paid interest starting at 1.75 per cent of the original loan, rising each year with inflation, and the loan was repaid as a share of the home's value when it was sold. The evaluation found that customers' understanding of those terms was weaker than their understanding of the rest of the scheme.
The evaluation rated the scheme's value for money as "very high". It estimated a net present social value of £25.1 billion in 2024/25 prices, driven by £28.6 billion of benefit from extra housebuilding, measured as the rise in land values. It put the net cost to the public sector at £3.6 billion in present value terms: £30.9 billion of loans, administration and staff costs, less £27.3 billion of redemptions and interest, including repayments projected to 2039/40. The £25.1 billion is an estimate of benefit to society, not money returned to the Treasury.
The housebuilding benefit rests on the estimate that about 15 per cent of new homes built in England from 2013 to 2023 resulted from the scheme. That estimate comes from comparing areas either side of the England and Wales border, and the report says the effects "do not necessarily generalise to other areas in England".
The researchers tested that assumption. When they assumed the scheme added no homes beyond those bought with it, about 3 per cent of new completions, the net social benefit fell to £2.3 billion and the rating to "medium". When they applied the border effect only to the English regions next to Wales, it fell to £4.1 billion, rated "high". These were sensitivity tests, not revised central estimates, and in both the benefits still exceeded the costs.
Much of the support went to people who could have bought anyway. In June 2019 the National Audit Office reported that around three fifths of buyers could have bought a property without Help to Buy, and 31 per cent said they could have bought the property they wanted without it. Some 4 per cent of the 211,000 buyers who had used it by December 2018 had household incomes over £100,000. The 2026 evaluation found that 54 per cent of surveyed customers said they could have bought a home without the scheme. Many said they used it to buy a larger property than they could otherwise have afforded.
Help to Buy 2, from 2021, was restricted to first time buyers and capped prices at 1.5 times the regional average first time buyer price, up to £600,000 in London. The evaluation found the caps reduced the number of loans outside London, but found only small differences in first time buyer mortgage sales and no substantial effect on home ownership. It suggested that by 2021 high loan to value mortgages were more widely available, and that rising interest rates had made monthly repayments a bigger constraint than the deposit.
The scheme's effect also varied by area. Home ownership rose in areas that were already more affordable, with little effect in areas that were already relatively expensive. Prices rose most in those expensive areas, and the report said the scheme "may have driven up prices" there, so that increased supply "did not necessarily translate into improved access" for first time buyers.
Ending the scheme also had an effect. The evaluation estimated that its closure in 2023 cut first time buyer mortgage sales in England by about 10 to 15 per cent compared with what would otherwise have happened.
Your First Home's income and price caps are intended to target support at those who need it, the department says. It has not published the level of the caps, a forecast of the extra homes the scheme will produce, its expected effect on prices, the interest charges after the initial period or its total cost. Healey is due to set out the costs on 28 October.