Andy Burnham has set out a first-time buyer loan income cap for the Your First Home scheme, with households expected to be able to earn up to £110,000 and up to £140,000 in London. The details, including salary limits, are due to be set out at next week’s Budget.
The scheme is designed to help first-time buyers in England buy new-build homes with government-backed equity loans worth 20% of the purchase price from participating developers. Buyers would also be able to use deposits as low as 2.5%.
Andy Burnham and Your First Home
Burnham announced the scheme at last month's Labour conference and said it would focus on people who "really need support". That puts the policy in the space between broad homeownership help and tighter targeting, because the income caps are meant to decide which households can get access.
Under the proposal, the loan would be interest-free at first, and developers taking part would also be asked to contribute towards running costs. For buyers, the practical test is simple: if household income stays within the expected cap, the scheme could reduce the size of the deposit needed on a new-build home.
Help to Buy scheme comparison
The new plan follows the Help to Buy scheme, which ran from 2013 to 2021 and let all home purchasers put down a 5% deposit on a newly built home worth up to £600,000, with up to 20% of the cost covered by a shared equity loan. That loan was interest-free for the first five years.
A second version of the Help to Buy scheme ran from 2021 to 2023 and restricted access to first-time buyers, with regional-level price caps on the homes that qualified. The new income cap goes further by screening applicants by earnings as well as by property type.
Budget salary caps
The Times reported that ministers first considered limits of £90,000 outside London and £110,000 in the capital, before deciding those figures would exclude too many middle-earning couples such as teachers and nurses. That adjustment matters because the scheme is meant to reach buyers who earn too much for the lowest-end help but still struggle to assemble a deposit.
Next week’s Budget is the point at which the final salary caps and the rest of the scheme’s terms are due to be announced. For buyers watching whether they qualify, the answer now turns on the final income rule rather than the loan size alone.
