Mention "Help to Buy" to almost anyone under forty in Britain and you'll get a nod of recognition. Ask them what it actually is, and the confidence starts to wobble. The phrase has taken on a life of its own — shorthand for any government scheme that might get you onto the property ladder. Parents recommend it over Sunday lunch. Friends who bought a decade ago swear by it. Some estate agents still trade on the memory of it.
Here's the awkward part: the flagship version of it closed to new applicants in October 2022. Walk into a developer's sales office tomorrow and ask for a Help to Buy equity loan, and you'll be shown the door — politely, probably with a brochure for something else.
The name outlived the policy. That gap between what people remember and what actually exists is where first-time buyers lose time, and occasionally money, on the wrong assumptions. So it's worth being clear about what Help to Buy was, why it was retired, and what has genuinely taken its place.
What the scheme actually did
The equity loan was the headline act. You put down a 5% deposit on a new-build home, the government lent you up to 20% of the purchase price — 40% in London — and your mortgage covered the rest. The loan was interest-free for the first five years, apart from a £1 monthly admin fee, after which interest kicked in at a low rate and crept upward over time. It was new-builds only, and in its final phase it was restricted to first-time buyers with regional price caps on what you could buy.
Hundreds of thousands of households used it. For many of them, it did exactly what the brochure promised: turned a deposit that would have taken a decade to save into something achievable in a couple of years. That's not a small thing, and it's worth acknowledging plainly before the criticism.
Why it was wound down
The problems had been accumulating for years. New-build homes typically carry a price premium over comparable second-hand properties, and that premium tends to fade on resale — which meant the government's "help" was sometimes quietly absorbed into the price of the house itself. Official reviews, including work by the National Audit Office, questioned how many users could have bought anyway without the scheme, and whether pumping additional demand into a supply-constrained market simply fed into prices. Subsidising buyers, in short, is not the same as building houses.
Rather than kill it outright, the government tapered it — first-time buyers only, price caps, a two-year sunset — and then closed the door. Wales ran its own version, which ended in 2023; Scotland's ended earlier still.
The other schemes wearing the same name
Part of the confusion is that "Help to Buy" was never one thing. The Help to Buy ISA, for instance, closed to new savers back in 2019 — but if you or your partner opened one before that deadline, it's worth digging out the paperwork. The 25% government bonus can still be claimed on a first home purchase until the end of 2030, and these accounts are exactly the sort of thing people forget they have.
What took its place
There is no single successor. There are several smaller schemes, each with its own fine print, and the differences between them matter more than the marketing suggests.
First Homes offers new-build properties at a discount of at least 30% off market value to eligible first-time buyers, subject to income caps and, in some areas, local connection tests. The discount is permanent — it passes to the next buyer — which protects affordability for the long term but also caps what your home can eventually sell for.
Shared Ownership lets you buy a share of a property — traditionally between 25% and 75%, with some new leases starting as low as 10% — and pay rent on the rest to a housing association. The deposit is smaller, but the rent, service charges and leasehold costs are real monthly money, and buyers routinely underestimate them. Run the full numbers before assuming it's the cheaper route.
The Mortgage Guarantee Scheme backs lenders offering 5%-deposit mortgages, and it has been extended more than once since launching. Check whether it's still open before building plans around it — government schemes have a habit of quietly expiring.
The Lifetime ISA is available to under-40s: save up to £4,000 a year and receive a 25% government bonus, usable toward a first home under £450,000. The catch is the withdrawal penalty if you take the money out for anything other than a qualifying home or retirement — a charge that can exceed the bonus itself. The terms have also been under review recently, so verify the current rules rather than relying on an old article.
Deposit Unlock, a builder-backed scheme allowing 95% mortgages on new-builds through participating lenders, is less well known but worth a look if you're set on a new-build with a small deposit.
And don't forget stamp duty relief: first-time buyers in England and Northern Ireland pay nothing below a threshold that has shifted several times in recent years. Check the current figure, not the one you half-remember from a newspaper headline.
The honest trade-offs
None of these replicate the equity loan's central trick — a large chunk of the purchase price, interest-free, for five years. That was genuinely unusual, and it's gone.
Each replacement carries a cost the headline doesn't advertise. Shared ownership's total monthly outlay can end up exceeding a full mortgage on a cheaper property. First Homes caps your upside as well as your entry price. The Lifetime ISA punishes you for changing your mind. The 5%-deposit routes leave you more exposed if prices fall, with less equity cushioning the fall.
So the practical move is to work backwards. Total up the deposit you can realistically assemble. Be honest about the full monthly cost you can carry — rent, service charge, interest, all of it. Then see which scheme, if any, fits that shape. Picking the scheme first and squeezing your life into it is how people end up stuck in homes that only made sense on paper.
The name will change again
The phrase survives because the need does. Wages, rents and deposit maths have not quietly resolved themselves in the scheme's absence, and governments will keep renaming their answer to that problem. Each new name will arrive with its own version of fine print.
Whatever the scheme is called by the time you read this, the homework hasn't changed: read the small print twice, run the complete monthly numbers once, and never buy a headline.