Help to Buy is gone: what first-time buyers use instead

The Help to Buy equity loan closed to new applicants in England in 2023 and is not coming back in that form. First-time buyers today use a mix of other routes instead: 95% loan to value mortgages, shared ownership, the First Homes discount scheme, housebuilder-backed deposit schemes on new builds, the Lifetime ISA bonus, and family-assisted mortgages such as joint borrower sole proprietor or guarantor arrangements. Which one suits you depends far more on whether your constraint is deposit or income.

Almost every buyer is blocked by one of two things.

If you have a decent income but no deposit, a 95% mortgage, a family-assisted product or a deposit-backed new build scheme is your route.

If you have a deposit but your income will not stretch to local prices, shared ownership, First Homes or a joint borrower sole proprietor arrangement are the options that actually change the answer. A 95% mortgage does nothing for you, because your problem is the size of the loan, not the size of the deposit.

Getting this diagnosis right saves months. People spend a year saving harder when their real obstacle was affordability.

These are the mainstream answer for buyers with a 5% deposit and are widely available from high street lenders. On a 250,000 pound home you need 12,500 pounds.

The trade-offs are real. Pricing at 95% is meaningfully worse than at 90%, so you pay more each month for the same house. You also start with very little equity, so if prices fall you can find yourself in negative equity or unable to remortgage onto a better rate at the end of your fixed term. Overpaying in the early years, where your product allows it, is a sensible way to get into a better loan to value band before your fix ends.

You buy a share of a home, typically between 10% and 75%, from a housing association, and pay a subsidised rent on the share you do not own. You can buy more shares later, which is called staircasing.

It genuinely lowers the entry cost. A 40% share of a 250,000 pound home is 100,000 pounds, so a 10% deposit is 10,000 pounds and your mortgage is 90,000 pounds rather than 225,000 pounds.

It also has honest downsides. Most shared ownership homes are leasehold. You pay rent and a service charge on top of the mortgage, and both rise over time. Selling can be slower because the housing association usually has a nomination period in which it tries to find a buyer first. Some newer leases include a period during which the landlord covers certain repairs, often ten years, and allow staircasing in 1% increments, which is a real improvement on older leases.

First Homes offers eligible first-time buyers in England a discount of at least 30% off the market price of a new build, with the discount passed on to the next eligible buyer when you sell.

The discount is substantial. A home valued at 250,000 pounds sells at 175,000 pounds or less, cutting both the deposit and the mortgage you need.

The catch is availability. Supply is limited to specific developments, and local councils set their own eligibility criteria on income caps and local connection, so what qualifies in one area may not in another. There are also resale restrictions for the life of the property, and not every lender offers mortgages on First Homes properties. Check with the local council for the development you are looking at.

Several housebuilders participate in schemes, commonly known under the deposit unlock label, that let buyers purchase a new build with around a 5% deposit through a specific set of participating lenders. Availability depends on the developer and the site, and terms change, so treat any specific claim as something to verify with the builder and a broker rather than as a fixed rule.

On new builds generally, be careful with incentives. A builder contributing towards your deposit or paying your legal fees is normally treated as a vendor incentive, and lenders usually deduct it from the purchase price when working out loan to value. That can quietly push you into a worse rate band than you expected.

Not a mortgage scheme, but for most first-time buyers it is the single most valuable thing on this list, because a 25% government bonus of up to 1,000 pounds a year is a straight uplift on money you were saving anyway.

The conditions are specific: you must be 18 to 39 to open one, contribute up to 4,000 pounds per tax year, buy a property costing 450,000 pounds or less with a mortgage, and hold the account at least 12 months before using it. Withdrawing for any other reason before 60 costs a 25% government charge.

Use it alongside any of the other routes here. It combines with a 95% mortgage, with shared ownership and with First Homes.

This is where the biggest gains usually sit for people with helpful relatives.

A joint borrower sole proprietor mortgage adds a family member's income to the affordability calculation while keeping only you on the title deeds, which usually avoids the additional property tax rate that applies to second homes. The helper is fully liable for the debt.

A guarantor mortgage makes a relative responsible for payments if you default. It is a heavier commitment and less common now than JBSP.

Family deposit and offset products let a relative place a lump sum, often around 10% of the price, in a linked account as security for a fixed period, after which they get it back if payments have been maintained. Terms vary considerably between lenders.

A straightforward gifted deposit remains the simplest of all, though it requires a gift letter and evidence of where the donor's money came from.

• 95% mortgage: lowest complexity, highest monthly cost, needs 5% deposit and strong affordability.
• Shared ownership: lowest entry cost, but rent plus service charge, leasehold, slower resale.
• First Homes: best value per pound if you can find one, but scarce and locally restricted.
• Deposit unlock style schemes: useful on new builds, tied to specific developers and lenders.
• Lifetime ISA: adds up to 1,000 pounds a year, works with everything else, capped at 450,000 pound properties.
• Family-assisted: solves affordability rather than deposit, but transfers real risk to a relative.

Do not assume Help to Buy still exists because a listing or an old article mentions it. Do not confuse the equity loan with the mortgage guarantee arrangements that support 95% lending, which are a different thing and support ordinary mortgages rather than giving you a loan. And do not commit to shared ownership or First Homes without reading the lease or the resale restriction properly, because both bind you for years.

Scotland and Wales run their own housing schemes separately from the English ones, and those change too, so check the relevant government site for where you are buying.

Because eligibility and lender participation shift so often with these schemes, it is worth a conversation before you fix on one. The MortgageMatch directory can point you to an FCA-authorised broker who works with the schemes available in your area.