Buying agent Nina Harrison advises potential Your First Home buyers to avoid paying over the odds, taking lessons from Help to Buy when, she says, some developers “pushed prices towards the artificial thresholds set by the Government”.

Jess Parkinson and Elliot Fitzpatrick paid £460,000 for their first home, a two bedroom flat in Crystal Palace, thanks to a 40 per cent equity loan from the Government in 2019. In 2022 the couple were ready to move out of London, put the flat on the market and got an offer for the full asking price — £475,000. Unfortunately the deal didn’t progress. Then came Liz Truss’s disastrous mini budget which caused interest rates to spiral — and prices started to flag.

Eventually, they accepted an offer of £450,000 — £10,000 less than they had paid for the flat.

“We accepted partly because we needed to sell within five years because after that we would have had to start paying interest on our Help to Buy loan,” says Jess.

Looking back, Jess feels the flat was over-priced because it was part of the Help to Buy scheme.

Despite all this Jess doesn’t regret using Help to Buy on the basis that it gave her a secure, affordable home in London for five years. They are now happily settled in a three-bedroom 1960s semi in Faversham, Kent, which is more than twice the size of their old home and cost £325,000.

Ruth Bloomfield