Search for first-time buyer schemes and you'll get lists of ten or twelve. Half of them are closed, a couple were never really schemes, and the one that matters most to anyone saving right now changed on 29 October 2026.

Here's the short list of what you can actually use in England, as at the end of October 2026, and what each one is genuinely good for.

What's closed, so you can stop reading about it

Help to Buy: Equity Loan is gone in England. GOV.UK's own page now says plainly that you can no longer apply for one for a property in England. It still exists in Wales. Plenty of articles still describe it as if it's open, because it was the biggest scheme for a decade and nobody went back to tidy up.

The Help to Buy ISA is closed to new savers. If you already hold one you can keep it, but you can't open one now.

Everything below is live.

The Lifetime ISA, and what changed this week

The LISA is still the account most first-time buyers open, and you can still open one today. The rules, from GOV.UK as at October 2026:


Who can open one	18 or over, under 40
How much you can pay in	£4,000 a year, until you're 50
Government bonus	25%, up to £1,000 a year
Property price cap	£450,000
Timing	The purchase has to be at least 12 months after your first payment in
How the money moves	Paid by the provider to your conveyancer, and you need a mortgage

The bonus is real money. Put in the full £4,000 and the government adds £1,000.

The catch has always been the cap. £450,000 is a hard line, and it's been there since the account launched in 2017. Go over it and the withdrawal is penalised.

The penalty for going over just got smaller

From 29 October 2026, if you use your LISA to buy a home costing more than £450,000, the withdrawal charge is 20%, down from 25%. Anything else that isn't a first home, retirement at 60 or terminal illness still pays 25%. The change doesn't apply backwards, so anyone who already took the 25% hit doesn't get it back.

That five-point drop matters more than it looks. At 25%, the charge took the whole bonus and a slice of your own savings. At 20%, the arithmetic roughly evens out:

You pay in £4,000, the bonus makes it £5,000
20% of £5,000 is £1,000
You walk away with £4,000, which is what you put in

So buying over the cap now costs you the bonus, and any growth that's charged along with it, rather than your own money. That's a very different risk from the one the LISA carried last week.

How often does the cap actually bite?

We checked the asking prices of the active listings we track across London and the commuter belt on 30 October 2026. 60% are priced above £450,000. Median asking price across those listings: £530,000.

That's asking price, not sold price, and it's every listing, not just the flats and smaller houses a first-time buyer is likelier to look at. But in this part of the country, a LISA saver is more likely than not to be looking at homes over the cap. Until this week, that was a reason to think twice about locking money in. Now it's mostly a question of whether you'd lose the bonus.

The replacement: the First Time Buyer ISA

The government has confirmed a new First Time Buyer ISA from April 2029, offered in place of the LISA. The terms it set out in October 2026:

Up to £4,000 a year, with a 25% bonus, same as the LISA
Total bonus capped at £20,000
The £450,000 price cap stays
The bonus is paid when you buy, so there's no withdrawal charge
You can't transfer a LISA into it, but you can use both towards the same purchase

April 2029 is a long way off if you're buying in the next two years, and legislation still has to be passed. For anyone saving now, the LISA is the live option. Don't hold off waiting for the new one.

Shared Ownership

You buy a share of the home, between 10% and 75% of its market value, with a mortgage on that share, and pay rent to the landlord on the rest. The deposit is usually 5% to 10% of the share, not of the whole home, which is the whole appeal.

To qualify, your household income has to be £80,000 or less, or £90,000 or less in London.

It gets you in with a much smaller deposit. It doesn't make owning cheaper month to month, because you pay the full service charge whatever share you own, and selling is slower than selling a home you own outright. We've written the full, unsponsored version: shared ownership, the honest version.

First Homes

A newly built home sold at 30% to 50% below its market value, to first-time buyers in England. Same income caps as shared ownership: £80,000, or £90,000 in London. Councils can set tighter local rules, often including a local connection.

The discount stays with the property, so when you sell, the next buyer gets the same percentage off. That's what keeps it affordable, and it's also why your future sale price is capped below market.

It's only on specific new-build sites. You don't apply for First Homes in general, you find a development that's offering them. Your council's housing or planning pages are the place to look.

The Mortgage Guarantee Scheme

This one isn't something you apply for. It's a government guarantee to lenders that keeps 91% to 95% loan-to-value mortgages on the market, which is to say mortgages with a 5% deposit. It was made permanent in July 2025.

In practice it just means 5% deposit mortgages exist. You'll see the lender's product, not the scheme, and you'll pay a higher rate than you would with a bigger deposit. Ask a broker whether a 95% product is worth it against waiting to save to 10%.

Right to Buy

Only for council tenants and other public sector tenants, after at least 3 years as a public sector tenant. The discount is a percentage of the value, starting at 35% for houses and 50% for flats, but it's capped by region.

The caps were cut sharply from 21 November 2024. In most of London the maximum discount is now £16,000. It's £38,000 in Barking and Dagenham and in Havering, and elsewhere in England the cap ranges from £16,000 to £38,000 depending on the area. If you're a tenant who'd written it off as too small to bother with, outside London it may still be worth the maths.

Stamp duty relief

Not a scheme you sign up to, but it's the biggest saving most first-time buyers in England actually get. As at October 2026: no stamp duty up to £300,000, then 5% on the part from £300,001 to £500,000. Over £500,000 you get no relief at all.

Worked examples are in our stamp duty for first-time buyers guide.

What to do about it

If you're under 40 and might buy, open a LISA now. Even £1 starts the 12-month clock. You don't have to fill it.
Check your likely price against £450,000. Under it, the bonus is free money. Over it, you'll now roughly get your own money back without the bonus. Either way it's no longer the trap it was.
Don't wait for the First Time Buyer ISA unless you're buying after April 2029. You can use both on the same purchase anyway.
If the deposit is the blocker, compare shared ownership and First Homes against a 95% mortgage. Work out the monthly cost of each, including rent and service charge for shared ownership, not just the deposit.
Check your income against £80,000, or £90,000 in London. It's the cut-off for both shared ownership and First Homes.
Ask your council what's available locally. First Homes and some shared ownership sites come with local connection rules that only the council can tell you about.

The honest summary

The list is shorter than most articles make it look. In practice you'll be using the LISA, stamp duty relief, and maybe a 5% deposit mortgage, with shared ownership or First Homes if the deposit is out of reach. The genuinely new thing this month is that buying over the LISA cap now costs you the bonus rather than your own savings. The cap hasn't moved, and in London most homes are still above it.

This is general information, not financial advice, and covers England only. Scheme rules and rates are as at 30 October 2026 and change at fiscal events. Check GOV.UK, and speak to a mortgage broker or financial adviser, before deciding where to put your savings.