The government’s FirstBuy scheme will help approved buyers on incomes of below £60,000 to purchase a new home. £250 million has been allocated for the initiative (split £200 million for England and the rest for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and the funding for the financial year 2011-12 will support around 10,000 new home sales. <br> <br> The government and the housebuilder will each put in 10% of the price of the home while the buyer finds a 5% deposit and borrows the remaining 75%. FirstBuy will be a shared equity scheme, with the government and housebuilder receiving its share of any increase in house value when the home is sold. <br> <br> “There could be no better demonstration of the government’s concern about the low level of housebuilding than finding £250 million in the current fiscal climate,” commented HBF’s director of economic affairs John Stewart. “This is what we lobbied for.”<br> <br>