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Exclusive affordable homes survey from WhatHouse?

Posted 13 April 2016 by Helen Christie

At WhatHouse?, we wanted to find out more about our readers and their homes, so we put together a survey and here are the results...

Out of the respondents, with over half (59%) being female, 25% of them were aged between 50-59, and 23% were aged between 30-39.

Out of the respondents, 36% own a property with a mortgage, and 26% own a property without a mortgage. Just 1% of those surveyed rent a room in a property.

Just over a quarter of people were looking to buy a new home, and while nearly three quarters of respondents (71%) have heard of Help to Buy and other government schemes, interestingly, less than 10% would actually use a government scheme to purchase a new home.

Whether this is due to a lack of understanding about the individual schemes or simply down to the fact that the schemes may not be applicable to the individual respondents, we thought we’d  put together a quick summary of each of the schemes.

Help to Buy

Help to Buy is a government initiative aimed to help first-time buyers purchase their own home.  It requires the buyer to put down as little as 5% of the purchase price with the government then adding incentives to the buyer and mortgage lender. 

Click here to find out more about Help to Buy

Shared Ownership

Shared Ownership is a government-backed scheme designed to help people who cannot afford a home at full market value to get on the property ladder by buying a fraction of a property and paying a subsidised rent on the remainder. It is sometimes referred to as 'part-buy/part-rent'.

Click here to find out more about Shared Ownership

Starter Homes

The Starter Home Initiative is a government scheme which was announced in December 2014 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. It pledged to make 100,000 starter homes available at an affordable price in order to help first-time buyers onto the property ladder.

Right to Buy

The Right to Buy scheme helps eligible council and housing association tenants in England to buy their home with a discount of up to £103,900 (£77,900 outside London).


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