Your First Home – how much will it boost supply?

The scheme has been met with broad positivity from the housebuilding industry, whose minds were cast back to the heady days of the original Help to Buy scheme – a period in which new home supply rose by almost 70% between 2013 and 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Major housebuilder Bellway has said the scheme could boost its completions by 10%. So, I thought I’d take this number, and with a bit of poetic licence, see what this could mean for supply over the next year or so.

This all sounds positive, perhaps until you translate that into actual numbers. For example, Bellway built 9,695 homes in the last year, suggesting that the Your First Home scheme will add a further 970 homes. Not a staggering amount – but Bellway isn't the only housebuilder that will use the scheme, so surely the combined effect will be bigger?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the five other largest listed housebuilders (Barratt Redrow, Persimmon, Vistry, Taylor Wimpey and Berkeley) collectively built just under 38,000 homes in their respective 12-month reporting periods (typically to April-July 2026).

Applying the same forecast from Bellway means Your First Home could boost output across the big six by around 4,800 homes, bringing total completions to roughly 52,400. That’s still around 250,000 shy of the Government’s target of 300,000 new homes a year.

But wait – plenty of unlisted housebuilders will use the scheme too. True. But then again, private completions only totalled 104,000 across England last year – so even if every private builder matched Bellway’s 10% uplift, that would add only around 10,000 homes. So, while Your First Home is good news for first-time buyers, don’t expect it to be a silver bullet for housing supply over the next year or so.