First-time buyer schemes

While these schemes are designed to support first-time buyers, I do not think they will fully cover the gap left by the Help to Buy scheme. The HTB scheme had the best of both worlds, allowing the client to get a more expensive home and also providing them with lower monthly payments, whereas the schemes below do not offer that.

Shared Ownership - Enabling first-time buyers to purchase a share of a property and pay rent on the remaining share.

First Home scheme - This aims to provide first-time buyers with a discount of at least 30% on the market price of a new-build home.

Support needs to be targeted at areas where first-time buyers face the most significant challenges, high property prices, deposits, and affordability. It is essential to ensure that the schemes are accessible and inclusive to all.

Overall, the government and lenders should work together to provide a range of schemes.

Even after fourteen years advising, first time buyers are still my absolute favourite as an advisor. Seeing someone work hard to save their deposit, and then have the pure excitement that comes with owning your first home - but I feel this part of the market is really dwindling. I have definitely noticed a void since Help to Buy has been withdrawn, as this combined with the cost of living crisis and rising rents has meant many hopeful first time buyers have had to put the breaks on saving. We really need more support from the government to help get these people that are stuck in rented on to the ladder.

First Time Buyer mortgages are usually thought of as low deposit mortgages - in our opinion there is a great range of these available from lenders offering high loan to value deals. Backing this up is the great range of Shared Ownership mortgages that are available, which are excellent for first timers - there could be more but despite the chaos caused by the mini-budget at lenders most providers have now returned to normal lending for this excellent scheme. Speaking personally we'd like to see the link between property sales teams and housing associations for shared ownership new properties demonstrate less pressure for first-time-buyers to use the related in-house mortgage and legal services - which often aren't a true open market offering and are a little lacking.

Unfortunately, there is nothing that will replace the gap left by the help to buy. Deposit Unlock is supposed to help replace the gap for new builds, however, with only 3 lenders and builders being very specific about what sites it will allow it on, this is not even coming close to the success and numbers of the HTB.
The government certainly felt that housing wasn't a priority on this years budget and we have been left with lenders offering their own FTB schemes, like nationwide 'helping hand' or Barclays 'springboard mortgage' and lenders offering Joint borrower and sole proprietor mortgages.
At 18 years old Students have the opportunity to go to university and will take a minimum of £27,000 student loan that they will pay back via their salary. Imagine if the government adopted the same idea for a housing deposit? and gave every FTB between 18-30 a housing loan to help buy their first home and pay back via their salary over a period of time.

We have seen several first-time buy schemes pop up with great marketing activity since the news of the withdrawal of the help-to-buy schemes. With the likes of Gen H and propertunitity offering creative solutions around equity support schemes, Joint borrow sole proprietor products and certain building societies pushing the creative solution on lending for first-time buyers.
These schemes and offerings can feel like a transparent solution compared to the misunderstandings around the help to buy exit from the scheme, where requirements for independent valuations etc are required to fulfill scheme requirements.
FTB's are a fundamental building block of the property economy, it would be good to shift the 'financial help' to 'finical education' which is sadly lacking in most formal educational settings. This focus on education could enhance the understanding of deposits, mortgage obligations, long-term financial commitment and reliances.

What first-time buyers need is affordable housing without the waffle. Successive Governments for years have sat back and done nothing to build houses, local planning authorities are a ball ache to deal with, with schemes taking months or even years to get approved which adds costs to the development.