Help to Buy: Equity Loan (2021-2023)

Help to Buy is a government scheme designed to help first time buyers who have never owned a property before to advance up the property ladder.

Who is eligible?

Help to Buy: Equity Loan (2021-2023) are available to first time buyers. The home you want to buy must be newly built with a price of up to £437,600, for the South East of England.(see the Help to Buy site for more regional caps)

How does it work?

With a Help to Buy equity loan the Government lends you up to 20% of the cost of your newly built home, so you’ll only need a 5% cash deposit and a 75% mortgage to make up the rest.

You must buy your home from a homebuilder registered for Help to Buy: Equity Loan.

The amount you pay for a home depends on where in England you buy it.

When getting a mortgage you will be able to borrow up to a maximum of 4.5 times your salary.

Help to Buy Equity Loan example

How do I pay back the Help to Buy equity loan?

You must pay back the loan after 25 years or when you sell your home - whichever comes first.

You will not be charged any interest on the 20% loan for the first five years of owning your home.

However a management fee of £1 a month will be applicable from the date of purchase for the duration of the equity loan.

From year six, a fee of 1.75% is payable on the equity loan, which rises annually by CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation plus 2%.

For full information about the scheme, please visit helptobuy.gov.uk

Announced in the March 2021 budget, the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme is available from April 2021 and offers the chance for first time buyers, as well as existing homeowners, to obtain a mortgage loan of 95% of the value of a property, provided they can raise a deposit for the remaining 5%.

As it’s a high amount, lenders are being incentivised by the government (through a guarantee system that compensates them for a portion of their losses in the event of foreclosure) to encourage them to make the funds available to borrow.  

It applies to any property under the value of £600,000, a new build or an older property, and is not restricted to first time buyers as some schemes are.

If you can’t quite afford the mortgage on 100% of a home, Help to Buy: Shared Ownership offers you the chance to buy a share of your home (between 25% and 75% of the home’s value) and pay a monthly rent on the remaining share. 

You could buy a home through Help to Buy: Shared Ownership in England if:

• your household earns £80,000 a year or less outside London, or your household earns £90,000 a year or less in London
• you are a first-time buyer, you used to own a home but can’t afford to buy one now or are an existing shared owner looking to move.

You’ll need to take out a mortgage to pay for your share of the home’s purchase price, or fund this through your savings.On the share you do not purchase, you will pay rent of 2.75% of the unsold value, this will be paid monthly via direct debit. You can purchase more shares in the future until you own the whole property and stop paying rent altogether.