On 26 September 2026, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced Your First Home, a scheme to help first-time buyers in England buy a new build. Buyers would need a 2.5% deposit, and the government would lend them 20% of the home's value as an equity loan, with an interest-free period at the start.
Plenty isn't settled yet. More detail is expected in the Budget, and ministers haven't confirmed whether there will be an age limit or a cap on the price of the home. The money is expected to come from existing budgets, with housebuilders paying towards the running costs.
The idea isn't new. Help to Buy, launched in 2013, also used a 20% equity loan on new builds: more than 387,000 homes were bought through it, 328,000 of them by first-time buyers. Its own evaluation found it helped people into home ownership in some areas but didn't remove the affordability barrier where prices were already high.
What it means for agents
Until the Budget fills in the gaps, first-time buyers will have questions nobody can answer precisely yet. Am I eligible? Which homes count? How does the loan work, and what happens when the interest-free period ends? They'll ask Google, and more and more of them will ask ChatGPT and other AI tools.
The agencies whose websites answer those questions plainly, and say honestly what isn't known yet, are the ones that get found and quoted. Pages that guess at details, or just repeat the scheme's name, help nobody and age badly.
What to do now
- If you sell new builds, add a short, dated page on the scheme as it stands: what's been announced, what hasn't been confirmed, and when more detail is due. Update it after the Budget.
- Write for the buyer, not for a keyword. Answer the questions people actually ask, in plain words.
- Link the page from your new homes listings and your buying guide, so people and search engines can find it.
- Lettings teams: some of your tenants will be thinking about buying for the first time. A line on your tenant pages pointing to the guide helps them, and keeps them talking to you.
We'll update this post when the Budget confirms the details.
