Your First Home: does Northern Ireland already have the answer?

Written by Mark Graham, Chief Executive of Co-Ownership

The housing industry is facing a conundrum: house builders cannot afford to build homes that people can afford to buy. There are lots of reasons why we're not building enough homes, not least the planning system in general, or specific issues like the lack of investment in the wastewater infrastructure in Northern Ireland, but it’s not just about the constraints on supply. It's about low demand for new build homes at a price that people can get a mortgage for. It's this demand problem that the new Your First Home proposal announced by the UK government is trying to solve.  

 The Your First Home scheme is designed to help first time buyers purchase a new-build property with only a 2.5% deposit and a 20% government equity loan, subject to income and price caps. It's trying to solve the deposit problem for people that do not have enough in savings or the help of the bank of mum and dad.  

 We’ll find out more details in the announcement later this week, but from what we know so far, it looks like a more targeted replacement for the Help to Buy scheme that ran in England from 2013 until 2023. Like that scheme, the new Your First Home proposal has been heavily lobbied for by house builders to stimulate the market and make new homes for first time buyers viable to build. It is primarily about solving a problem in the south of England where house prices have been stagnating - or in London falling - in recent years. In the Southeast of England since mortgage rates went up in 2022, homes have become too expensive to buy unless buyers have a very high income and a large deposit.

 Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland we're seeing very different house price trends. Here house prices have increased by 39% over the last 5 years, and the price of new build homes have increased by 47%! Northern Ireland is no longer the most affordable place to buy a home in the UK. We are now more mid-table.

Despite this, house builders here face many of the same issues as they do in Great Britain, and indeed the Republic of Ireland. Construction costs, specifically  material costs for things like wood and concrete, have increased rapidly since Covid, while at the same time mortgage rates and high inflation have limited people's affordability. This has made it more difficult to build homes that people relying on a mortgage can afford. And this particularly affects first time buyer homes.

Housing is fully devolved to the Northern Ireland government, and it will be their decision whether to introduce a Your First Home product here. Co-Ownership already largely provides a solution to these problems. Co-Ownership is a shared ownership approach where our customers can choose any home on the market below a maximum property value limit. Customers buy part of their home with a mortgage and Co-Ownership buys the rest. It is more affordable than a full mortgage and usually cheaper than renting. This approach is unique to Northern Ireland, creating additional demand by solving the deposit problem and the mortgage affordability problem. One of the unique aspects of Co-Ownership's approach to shared ownership is the deposit free mortgages offered by three local mortgage lenders to our customers, which means that around half of Co-Ownership's customers don’t put down a deposit. This is a game changer for those that do not have the financial support of family to rely upon and those who struggle to save due to the high rents they pay.

Co-Ownership has also recently taken steps to help the delivery of more first time buyer homes by increasing the maximum price at which we will buy new build homes, up to £230,000. This is in response to the price inflation in the new build sector. We've seen a positive response from house builders, and an increase in additional homes becoming available to our customers. Some of these homes have been made available only to Co-Ownership customers due to the new planning policies coming into force across councils as part of the Local Development Plans. This means that in some housing developments, homes are being built specifically for our customers. It's still early days, but this has delivered over 100 new build homes onto the market over the last two years. With property value limits now better aligned with the cost of building a home, and more Local Development Plans being approved, we expect many more to come our way over the next few years.

Getting more homes built is a long-term project and no single initiative is going to be a game changer. We need to create the right environment to encourage more homes to be built. Part of that is a better planning system and more investment in infrastructure. Part of it is also ensuring demand exists for these homes. That's what the new Your First Home initiative is meant achieve, and in Northern Ireland, it’s something that Co-Ownership already delivers.

Find out more about homes only available through Co-Ownership.

Published 26 October 2026