Brown unveils shared-ownership scheme

Up to 100,000 people will be given help buying their own home under plans to be announced later this week, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said yesterday.

Under a shared-ownership scheme trailed in Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party manifesto before the May 5 election, couples currently unable to afford a home would be able to share the cost with the government and a mortgage lender.

"We have created stability in this country, and now we must ensure that the benefits go particularly to young couples who want to own their own homes," Mr Brown told BBC television.

"I think over the next Parliament, with 100,000 benefiting from the shared equity scheme, we could probably have a million more home owners in Britain as a whole," he said.

Mr Brown will give details of a deal struck between the government and lenders to back the scheme later this week, a Treasury spokesman said.

The scheme would benefit couples unable to afford mortgage repayments on their first home. Instead they would buy 50 or 75 per cent of a property, with the remaining share being held by the government and the lender.

This would mean couples would only have to make mortgage payments on the share of the home they owned.

When the property is sold, they would would receive any capital gain in proportion with their ownership.

The scheme is an extension of an existing scheme aimed at helping key workers - such as teachers and nurses - buy properties in the high-priced south East.

The average house price in the southeast is £218,000, compared to a national average of £163,000, according to data from mortgage lender Halifax.