Whilst First Homes will lower the deposit required to access homeownership, for the majority of families on ordinary incomes who are struggling to save anything at all, the scheme will not help them to ‘level up’.
To truly ‘level up’ we need to broaden the reach of home ownership to those who do not fall into this category. The inability to save for a deposit needs to be addressed, not just lowering the deposit itself.
Coronavirus is likely to exacerbate this problem, with many of those who did have savings being forced to dip into them.