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Your First Home calculator

Free First Home Scheme Calculator: Find out how much you could borrow and check if you’re eligible as a first-time buyer under the new government scheme.

Try it with any price

Home price

Your deposit

Monthly mortgage payment

£1,042 a month

The equity loan is interest-free at first, so this is your whole monthly cost to begin with.

At 5% over 25 years. Change both under "More options".

Your deposit (2.5%)

£5,750

Government equity loan (20%)

Announced as 20%. Help to Buy allowed smaller loans; lower it here if the rules allow. Announced, rules due at Budget Government announcement.

Mortgage you need (77.5% of the price)

£178,250

More options

Interest rate on your mortgage

Use the interest rate from your mortgage quote to see what you might pay each month. The starting rate was checked on 26 September 2026, for a mortgage covering about 77.5% of the home price. Assumed

Years to pay off your mortgage

More years usually means a smaller monthly payment, but more interest paid overall.

How much could you borrow?

Your yearly household income before tax (optional)

Buying together? Add both yearly incomes before tax. This gives a rough idea of what you could borrow. Your income stays in your browser unless you choose to share, copy or embed your result.

Your borrowing estimate Assumed

This rough estimate uses 4.5 times your yearly household income before tax. For a mortgage of £178,250, that means an income of about £39,611 a year.

This is a rough estimate, not a lender's offer or advice. Lenders also check your spending, credit history and government loan. They may offer more or less.

Buying without the government loan

Interest rate without the government loan

Use a mortgage quote for buying with a 5% deposit and no government loan. This only changes the comparison below. The starting rate was checked on 26 September 2026. Assumed

The costs side by side

Compare the same home with a 5% deposit and a mortgage covering the remaining 95% of the price.

Deposit, mortgage and monthly payment with Your First Home, compared with buying without the scheme using a 5% deposit
Item	Your First Home	Without the scheme
Deposit	£5,750	£11,500
Mortgage	£178,250	£218,500
Monthly payment	£1,042	£1,348

The scheme costs £306 a month less during the interest-free years, and needs £5,750 less deposit. If both mortgages had the same rate the gap would be £235 a month, so £71 of the saving comes from the cheaper rate a smaller mortgage gets.

Paying back the government loan

Yearly change in your home's value

Try a possible rise or fall to see how it could change what you owe. Use a minus sign for a fall. This is a what-if example, not a prediction.

Years before you pay back the government loan

For example, when you might sell the home or clear the government loan. This is separate from the years you take to pay off your mortgage.

What might you repay to the government? Expected, detail to come

This loan is separate from your mortgage. It is expected to work like Help to Buy: you repay the same percentage of your home's value at the time, rather than the amount you originally borrowed. If your home's value rises, the amount you repay rises too.

Government loan repayment at different future values of your home
If your home is worth	You repay the government	Change from the amount borrowed
Value falls 10%: £207,000	£41,400	-£4,600
Value unchanged: £230,000	£46,000	+£0
Value rises 10%: £253,000	£50,600	+£4,600
Value rises 25%: £287,500	£57,500	+£11,500
After 5 years at 3% a year: £266,633	£53,327	+£7,327

When interest on the government loan starts Assumed

The rules have not been announced yet. This illustration uses the Help to Buy rules: no interest on the government loan for 5 years, then interest at 1.75% a year on the amount borrowed. The rate rises each year.

Year 6: government loan interest of £67.08 a month. Together with your mortgage, that is £1,109 a month.
Year 7: government loan interest of £69.77 a month, at a yearly rate of 1.82%.
These interest payments do not pay off the government loan. You still repay its full share of your home's value later.

Saving for your deposit

How much can you put aside each month?

See how long it could take to save the deposit, starting from zero. This does not change your mortgage payment.

How long could saving your deposit take?

If you save £300 a month, reaching a deposit of £5,750 would take about 1 year and 8 months. In a Lifetime ISA, with the 25% government bonus, about 1 year and 4 months. Can you use a Lifetime ISA with the scheme, and what is replacing it?

Tax when you buy (stamp duty)

Tax when you buy (stamp duty) Confirmed

As a first-time buyer you would pay £0 in stamp duty (first-time buyer relief saves you £2,100). How stamp duty works for first-time buyers.

About these figures

New-build homes in England only. £230,000 is the average starter home price (Rightmove) used in reports of the announcement.

The scheme is announced as needing a deposit of at least 2.5%. Announced, rules due at Budget

Figures are illustrations, not quotes or advice. A mortgage is a loan secured on your home. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. Figures are rounded to the nearest pound. How these numbers are worked out.

Illustration of the Your First Home scheme: 2.5% deposit, 20% government equity loan and 77.5% mortgage.

The government's new scheme lets first-time buyers in England buy a new-build home with a 2.5% deposit and a 20% government equity loan. Type a price and see what it would mean for you, next to a normal 95% mortgage.

Announced 26 September 2026. Full rules due at the Budget on 28 October 2026. We update the same day.

The scheme in 60 seconds

You need a deposit of at least 2.5% of the price. On the £230,000 home used as the example in reports of the announcement (Rightmove's average first-time buyer price), that is £5,750. Announced, rules due at Budget
The government lends you 20% of the price as an equity loan: it owns that share of your home's value until you pay it back. Announced, rules due at Budget
A normal mortgage covers the remaining 77.5%, which usually means a cheaper interest rate than a 95% mortgage.
The loan is interest-free at first. How long for, and what it costs after that, will be announced on 28 October 2026. Assumed
New-build homes in England only, from housebuilders signed up to the scheme, for first-time buyers only, with a household income cap and local price caps still to be set. Announced, rules due at Budget
When you sell, you are expected to repay the same percentage of the home's value at that time, not the sum you borrowed, as under Help to Buy. If prices rise, so does the repayment. Expected, detail to come

Source: MHCLG press release on GOV.UK, 26 September 2026. Badges show which figures are announced, which are confirmed in law and which are our working assumptions; the methodology page explains each one.

Start here

What is Your First Home?
The scheme in plain English: who it is for, what the government lends you and what it costs.
Am I eligible?
First-time buyer rules, the income cap and the price caps as far as they are known.
How much deposit do I need?
What 2.5% means in pounds, and how long it takes to save.
How is it different from Help to Buy?
The old scheme, the new one, and the lessons from 387,000 Help to Buy purchases.
Compare every first-time buyer scheme
Your First Home, Shared Ownership, First Homes, Own New, 95% mortgages and the Lifetime ISA side by side.
Shared Ownership explained
Buy a share, rent the rest. Is it worth it, and how does it compare?

Latest updates

27 September 2026
Your First Home scheme announced: what we know so far
The government announced Your First Home on 26 September 2026: a 2.5% deposit and 20% equity loan for first-time buyers on new builds in England.

All updates

Who runs this site

We are a team who have bought new houses and understand the challenges that new home buyers these days can face. We have nothing to sell you: no housebuilder, lender or government body pays for our pages or sees them before they are published. We show our sources on every page and publish how the calculators work. More about us, how we research pages and how we make money.