1. Freedom to Buy (the permanent Mortgage Guarantee Scheme)

Freedom to Buy is a government guarantee that sits behind the scenes at participating lenders, covering part of their losses if a 91 to 95% loan-to-value mortgage defaults. That encourages banks to keep offering 5% deposit mortgages. It launched as a temporary scheme in 2021 and became permanent in July 2025 under its new name.

You don’t apply for it directly. You simply take a 95% mortgage from a participating lender, including Lloyds, Halifax, NatWest, HSBC, Barclays and Santander, and the guarantee works automatically. It applies to residential main homes only, up to £600,000, on a repayment basis, and you’ll still need to pass the lender’s usual affordability checks.

The honest picture: because most lenders now offer 95% deals independently of the scheme, Freedom to Buy rarely changes which deal you can actually get. Moneyfacts recorded 537 different 95% LTV deals on the market in February 2026, almost double the number available two years earlier. It’s worth knowing the scheme exists, but don’t expect it to unlock anything you couldn’t already access.

2. No and low-deposit lender mortgages

This is where the genuine product innovation has happened, and it’s not a government scheme at all.

Skipton’s Track Record mortgage lets renters borrow up to 100% of a property’s value, up to £600,000, with no deposit and no guarantor. You’ll need at least 12 months of rent paid in the last 18, a clean credit history, and to be 21 or older. Your monthly payment is capped at your recent average rent, and Skipton raised that cap to 150% of your rent in May 2026, up from 120%, specifically to help more buyers qualify while keeping affordability checks meaningful. Since launch, it’s helped around 2,500 people onto the property ladder.

The Lloyds £5,000 deposit mortgage, launched across Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland in May 2026, lets you buy a home worth up to £300,000 with a flat £5,000 deposit, working out at up to 98.3% LTV. It’s a five-year fix at 5.89%, no product fee, up to a 40-year term. The deposit has to be your own savings though, gifted deposits aren’t accepted, and new builds and shared ownership properties are excluded. It follows a similar deal from Newcastle Building Society launched in 2025.

Both products come with a trade-off worth knowing: rates are typically higher than a mainstream deal with a proper deposit, and a smaller deposit means more exposure if property values dip. But for a renter who can afford the monthly payments but can’t save a lump sum, these products solve the actual barrier in a way most government schemes don’t.

3. Lifetime ISA (LISA)

A savings account for first-time buyers or retirement, where the government adds a 25% bonus on what you save, up to £1,000 a year on contributions of up to £4,000. It’s available as cash or stocks and shares, open to those aged 18 to 39, and you can keep contributing until you’re 50.

To use it towards a home, the property has to cost £450,000 or less, be bought with a mortgage, and the account needs to have been open at least 12 months.

The 25% government top-up is genuinely one of the best-value offers available to any saver, and two buyers can combine two LISAs for up to £2,000 a year in bonuses between them. The catch is the £450,000 property cap, which hasn’t moved since 2017 despite house prices rising substantially since, and the withdrawal penalty. If you take money out for anything other than a qualifying home purchase, you lose 25% of the whole pot, not just the bonus, which works out as roughly £625 lost on £10,000 saved. It’s a real drawback, and one reason the government is replacing it with a simpler First Time Buyer ISA, expected around 2028. Your existing LISA isn’t going anywhere in the meantime, and you can keep using it.

4. Shared Ownership

You buy a share of a home, typically 10 to 75%, and pay subsidised rent on the rest. Your deposit is calculated against your share rather than the full price, so a 10% deposit on a 40% share of a £300,000 home works out at £12,000 rather than £30,000.

To qualify, your household income needs to be £80,000 or less (£90,000 in London), you can’t already own a home, and you’ll need to show you can’t afford a suitable home outright on the open market. There’s no property price cap. Under the current scheme, the minimum share is 10%, and you can buy more of the property over time in increments as small as 1%.

The trade-off is real: you’re paying mortgage plus rent plus service charge, so the total monthly cost is higher than the mortgage alone, and you’re responsible for the whole property as leaseholder. It’s a genuinely useful route in high-cost areas where a full mortgage isn’t realistic, but go in understanding the ongoing cost, not just the lower entry point.

5. First Homes

Certain new-build homes are sold to first-time buyers at a 30 to 50% discount to market value, and that discount is written permanently into the property’s title. When you eventually sell, you have to pass the same discount on to the next eligible buyer.

To qualify, your household income needs to be £80,000 or less (£90,000 in London), and the discounted price can’t exceed £250,000 (£420,000 in London). At least half the price must be funded by a mortgage.

The discount is genuinely large, but it’s permanent, which means your equity grows more slowly than on a normal purchase, and resale is restricted to other eligible buyers. Availability is also limited, with no central listings database, so you’ll need to check directly with developments in your area rather than expecting to find one easily.

6. First-time buyer Stamp Duty relief

First-time buyers pay 0% Stamp Duty on the first £300,000 of a purchase, and 5% on the portion between £300,001 and £500,000. Above £500,000, no relief applies at all.

This is automatic, there’s nothing to apply for, but it’s worth knowing the thresholds became less generous in April 2025, down from a temporary £425,000 nil-rate band. A first-time buyer paying £350,000 now pays £2,500 in Stamp Duty that would have been zero before that change. There’s also a hard cliff edge at £500,000: buy at £499,950 and you’ll pay around £9,997.50 in Stamp Duty, but push just above £500,000 and the relief disappears entirely. If you’re buying near that threshold, it’s worth understanding exactly where the line falls before you negotiate.

Scotland and Wales have their own versions with different thresholds, so check the specific rules if you’re buying outside England or Northern Ireland.

7. Family and guarantor mortgages

A family member helps you borrow more, without necessarily giving you cash outright. The two most common structures in 2026:

• Savings-as-security schemes (like Barclays Family Springboard or Lloyds Lend a Hand), where a relative puts around 10% of the price into a linked savings account for three to five years, letting you borrow up to 100%. They get their money back with interest as long as you keep up repayments.
• Joint Borrower Sole Proprietor (JBSP), where up to four people go on the mortgage for affordability purposes, but only you own the property, which helps you borrow more without triggering the second-home Stamp Duty surcharge.

These can genuinely transform what you can borrow. Research from early 2026 found buyers using family-assisted schemes raised their average maximum borrowing by nearly £90,000, lifting typical budgets from around £271,000 to almost £391,000. The trade-off is that rates are often higher than a standard 95% deal, and the helper’s savings or credit file carry real exposure if things go wrong, so it’s a decision for the whole family to make together, not just the buyer.

8. Devolved schemes: Scotland and Wales

Most UK-wide schemes are England-focused, so buyers in Scotland and Wales have their own routes.

LIFT (Open Market Shared Equity), Scotland: the Scottish Government takes a 10 to 40% stake in a home you buy on the open market, interest-free with no monthly rent on their share. Applications are currently paused, expected to reopen in the 2026/27 financial year, so check the current status before planning around it.

Help to Buy Wales: a shared-equity loan of up to 20% on new-build homes up to £300,000, alongside a 5% deposit and 75% mortgage. It’s interest-free for the first five years, after which a fee applies. Applications close on 30 September 2026, so there’s a genuine deadline if this is relevant to you.