Andy Burnham‘s proposed ‘Your First Home’ scheme aims to cut the minimum deposit for first-time buyers to 2.5%, backed by a government equity loan covering 20% of the purchase price. New data from online mortgage broker Mojo Mortgages suggests the scheme’s income eligibility rules will bar a significant portion of the buyers it was designed to help.
According to Mojo’s internal customer data, the proposed household income caps of £90,000 outside London and £110,000 within Greater London would exclude more than 13% of first-time buyer applicants nationwide. In London and the surrounding area, that figure climbs to over 22%. The disproportionate impact on dual-earner couples in high-cost cities is the central tension the broker’s analysis highlights: two people each earning average London wages can easily clear the £110,000 threshold while still lacking sufficient savings to fund a conventional deposit.
John Fraser-Tucker, head of mortgages at Mojo Mortgages, said: “Lowering the deposit barrier to 2.5% addresses one of the single biggest hurdles first-time buyers face. However, introducing strict household income caps creates a delicate balancing act. Two average working earners buying together, especially in high-cost regions, can easily cross these thresholds, effectively locking out working couples who are already squeezed by high property values.”
The savings landscape behind the numbers
The same data set illustrates how first-time buyers are already adapting to structural affordability pressures. A Mojo Mortgages survey conducted by Censuswide in April 2026, covering 1,000 UK first-time buyers, found that 64% rely on side hustles such as resale platforms or freelance income to build their deposit savings, with 53% of that cohort reporting the additional income shortened their savings timeline by two to three years. A further 22% said they had remained in roles they described as toxic solely to maintain the income stability required for a mortgage application. Some 26% still relied on a gifted family deposit to complete a purchase.
Five schemes, five trade-offs
The release accompanies a full breakdown of the five current or proposed government-backed routes to homeownership. Beyond ‘Your First Home’, the active options include the Lifetime ISA, which offers a 25% government bonus on savings up to £4,000 per tax year but is capped at properties priced below £450,000; the First Homes Scheme, which provides a 30% to 50% discount on new-build properties for local key workers but suffers from severely constrained availability; the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme, which enables 95% LTV borrowing on open-market properties but at higher interest rates; and Shared Ownership, which calculates the deposit against a purchased share rather than full property value but layers in ongoing rent and service charges on top of mortgage payments.
Market context
The broader proptech and mortgage-fintech market has seen a wave of digital broker services competing on speed of comparison and the quality of eligibility tooling. Mojo, which compares products from more than 60 lenders, sits in a segment that includes Habito and Trussle. The commercial value of this kind of analysis is partly editorial, establishing the broker as the authoritative voice on scheme eligibility, and partly lead generation, the release closes with a prompt to consult a Mojo adviser.
The policy stakes are real, however. The interaction between income caps and property prices in London has been a recurring failure mode for previous help-to-buy iterations. Policymakers drafting the final ‘Your First Home’ legislation will need to determine whether the income thresholds should be indexed to regional property price-to-income ratios rather than set as fixed nominal figures. If they are not adjusted, the scheme risks replicating the geographic inequity of its predecessors even before a single mortgage is drawn down.
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