Your First Home price caps: what we know before the Budget

What has been announced about price caps?

Your First Home price caps exist but have no numbers yet. The government’s announcement says the scheme “will also set a household income cap with local property price caps to further ensure support is targeted at those who need it, the detail of which will be set out at Budget” (GOV.UK). The Budget is on Wednesday 28 October 2026. We will publish the caps here the same day and update the calculator to flag any price above your area’s limit.

Until then, treat any specific figure you read elsewhere with suspicion. The £600,000 that appears in some coverage is Help to Buy’s old London cap.

What Help to Buy’s caps were

Help to Buy’s final version, from April 2021 to March 2023, set a maximum purchase price for each English region (GOV.UK). The table shows those caps and what a Your First Home buyer’s 2.5% deposit and the 20% loan would be at each price, purely as a guide to scale.

Those caps were “set at 1.5 times current forecast regional average FTB [first-time buyer] price, and a maximum of £600k in London”, as the 2018 Budget confirmed (UK Finance). House prices have moved since: the average UK home was £298,468 in August 2026 according to the Lloyds House Price Index. If the government repeats the 1.5 times method, the new caps would land above the 2021 figures in most regions; if it wants to keep the cost down, it could set them lower. Neither is announced.

Will London get a bigger loan or a higher price cap?

Nobody knows yet, and it is the biggest open question for anyone buying in the capital. Help to Buy treated London differently in two ways: the government lent up to 40% of the price there instead of 20%, because a 20% loan left a mortgage most Londoners could not afford, and the London price cap was £600,000 against £186,100 to £437,600 elsewhere (GOV.UK homebuyers’ guide). The Your First Home announcement says “20% government-backed equity loans” and “local property price caps” with no mention of London (GOV.UK), so our assumptions register records a London loan as “not yet known”.

What that means in pounds: on a £450,000 London new build, a 20% loan and a 2.5% deposit leave a £348,750 mortgage, which at the usual 4.5 times income needs a household earning about £77,500, close to any income cap set at the First Homes level of £90,000 in London. A 40% loan would cut the mortgage to £258,750 and the income needed to about £57,500. Whether the Budget offers London a bigger loan, a higher cap, both or neither decides whether the scheme works there at all. On Budget day this page will carry the answer, and the calculator lets you set the loan to 40% under “More options” to see the effect now.

Why the caps matter more than they look

• A cap decides which developments are in and which are out. A £230,000 flat in a £224,400 region is excluded entirely.
• A cap above £500,000 costs first-time buyers their stamp duty relief, which ends at that price (GOV.UK). A buyer at Help to Buy’s London cap of £600,000 would pay £20,000 in stamp duty at today’s rates.
• Developers price to caps. Help to Buy’s own evaluation found new-build prices ran ahead of the wider market in some areas while the scheme operated; the pros and cons page covers that evidence.

What to do before the caps are published

• Note the asking prices of the new-build developments you are interested in, so you can see instantly whether they fall inside your region’s cap.
• Use the calculator at those prices; the deposit and mortgage figures will not change when the caps arrive, only whether the home qualifies.
• If you are close to £500,000, read the stamp duty guide; the relief cliff is real money.
• Bookmark this page. The caps and the income cap are the two numbers we will add the moment they exist.