Your First Home eligibility: am I a first-time buyer?

Who qualifies for Your First Home?

To use Your First Home you must be a first-time buyer, buying a new-build home in England from a developer signed up to the scheme, with a household income and a home price under caps that the Budget will set on 28 October 2026; whether there is also an age limit is not known. That is what the government’s announcement says, with “a household income cap” and “local property price caps” whose levels are still to come (GOV.UK). Four of the five tests below are announced as rules and one is unknown. Nobody can apply yet.

What is a first-time buyer?

A first-time buyer, in every government definition that exists today, is someone who has never owned a home or a share of one, anywhere in the world. The clearest wording is HMRC’s, used for stamp duty relief: you must not have “previously acquired a major interest in a dwelling or an equivalent interest in land situated anywhere in the world”, and previous ownership includes homes you inherited, were given, or owned a part share of (HMRC manual SDLTM29845). If you are buying with someone else, everyone buying has to pass the test.

Help to Buy used the same idea: you and anyone you were buying with had to have never owned a home in the UK or abroad. The Lifetime ISA uses it too, with the added condition that the home must be your only home and cost £450,000 or less (GOV.UK). Your First Home has not published its own wording. Until it does, the safe assumption is the HMRC test.

Things that count as having owned a home

• A house or flat you bought, in the UK or any other country, even if you sold it at a loss or owned it for a week.
• A share of a home, including a Shared Ownership share or a share in a family property.
• A home you inherited or were given, even if you never lived in it.
• A home held in trust for you in some circumstances; ask a solicitor.

Things that do not count

• Renting, including renting for decades.
• Owning commercial property with no home attached, according to HMRC’s manual.
• Being named on a parent’s mortgage as a guarantor without owning a share (ownership is what matters, not the mortgage).
• Having a Help to Buy ISA or Lifetime ISA; saving is not owning.

Can I be a first-time buyer again?

No. There is no way back once you have owned a home, under stamp duty relief, Help to Buy, the Lifetime ISA, First Homes or, we assume, Your First Home. People ask this after a divorce, after selling a home abroad, or after a shared purchase went wrong, and the answer is the same each time.

The one scheme that helps previous owners is Shared Ownership, which is open to people who “used to own a home but cannot afford to buy one now” and to people forming a new household after a relationship breakdown (GOV.UK). The Shared Ownership eligibility page covers it.

Buying with a partner, a friend or a family member

For stamp duty relief and Help to Buy, every buyer named on the purchase had to be a first-time buyer. One previous owner in the couple disqualified the whole purchase. Expect Your First Home to work the same way, because the government has framed the scheme as being for people without family wealth, and the joint mortgage guide explains the options if one of you has owned before, including buying in one name (with the risks that carries).

The income cap

There will be one; the level is not set. The nearest comparison is the First Homes discount scheme, where household income must be £80,000 a year or less before tax, or £90,000 in London (GOV.UK). Shared Ownership uses the same figures (GOV.UK). Help to Buy had no income cap at all. Your First Home could copy the £80,000 line or set its own. Our income cap page explains how household income is likely to be counted and will carry the figure the day the Budget publishes it.

Whatever the cap, a second limit applies in practice: lenders usually lend up to about 4.5 times household income. On a £230,000 home the 77.5% mortgage is £178,250, which points to an income of about £39,600. The mortgage required calculator works this out for any price.

The price caps

Local price caps mean the maximum price of a home you can buy under the scheme depends on where it is. Help to Buy’s final version set a cap for each English region, from £186,100 in the North East to £600,000 in London (GOV.UK homebuyers’ guide). Your First Home will have its own; the price caps page will carry the table when it is published. The £600,000 figure some news sites quote is the old Help to Buy cap, not an announcement.

Other rules to expect

Help to Buy also required that the home was your only residence, that you did not own any other property when you completed, that you did not sublet it, and that you bought from a registered developer using a mortgage from a participating lender. None of these has been confirmed for Your First Home, but all of them are typical of government home-buying schemes and it would be surprising if they were absent.

What to do now

• Check yourself against the first-time buyer test above. If you have ever owned any share of any home, anywhere, plan around Shared Ownership or a plain mortgage instead.
• Add up your household income before tax and keep the figure handy for Budget day.
• Look at new-build prices in the areas you want, so you can react as soon as the local caps are announced.
• Run the numbers in the calculator, and read how the scheme works so the equity loan holds no surprises.
• Come back to this page after the Budget. Eligibility is the first thing we will update, and the updates page records each change.