Oli Yeates · 27 October 2026

Searches for "Your First Home Scheme" set to rocket tomorrow 🚀

Searches for Your First Home, the new scheme for first-time buyers, are set to rocket once Wednesday's Budget confirms the detail. Here is our forecast, based on the last scheme a Budget launched, and what agents and developers should publish.

Chancellor John Healey delivers his first Budget tomorrow, Wednesday 28 October, straight after Prime Minister's Questions at around 12:30pm. If last year is anything to go by, millions of people will turn to Google to work out what it means for them.

In our BIG 2026 Clicky Property Report, we found that property search in 2026 was driven by policy moments as much as by the seasons. The Budget is the biggest policy moment of the year, and for property this year it has one headline: the detail of Your First Home, the new scheme for first-time buyers. Here is what the search data says to expect, and how to be ready.

Your First Home: the search story to watch

Your First Home was announced by the government on 26 September. Tomorrow is expected to fill in the detail. City AM expects a 20% government-backed equity loan, initially interest-free, on new-build homes, with a deposit of just 2.5%, and income and local price caps.

That makes it the one Budget measure likely to create brand-new search demand, rather than a spike in something people already look up. It is also too new for search tools to measure: Semrush's data runs to July, before the scheme was announced, so "your first home scheme" has no history at all. Nobody ranks for it yet, which means the pages published this week have a real chance of owning it.

To estimate how big it gets, we looked at the last time a Budget launched a scheme for first-time buyers.

What happened last time

In the March 2021 Budget, Rishi Sunak announced the mortgage guarantee scheme, which backed 95% mortgages. Searches for it went from almost nothing to around 27,000 in Budget month:

Month	Searches for "mortgage guarantee scheme"
August 2020 to January 2021	~300 a month
February 2021 (reports before the Budget)	~15,000
March 2021 (Budget month)	~27,000
April 2021 (scheme opens)	~10,000
May 2021	~3,000
June 2021	~3,500
July 2021	~4,400

2 lessons for tomorrow. The peak arrives in Budget month itself, with reports beforehand starting the climb, and within 3 months searches settle at around 15% of that peak. And people search for what a scheme does more than for its name: "95 mortgages" peaked at around 137,000 searches in March 2021, 5 times the scheme's own name.

Our forecast for Your First Home

Your First Home is a bigger story than the 2021 scheme. It is the Budget's housing headline, and it works like Help to Buy, which drew around 143,000 searches a month at its height ("help to buy" and "help to buy scheme" together, 2021). So we expect the same curve with a higher peak:

Month	Forecast searches for "your first home scheme" and close variants
Before 26 September 2026	Almost none
October 2026 (Budget on 28 October)	15,000 to 40,000
November 2026	40,000 to 95,000
December 2026	15,000 to 35,000
January to March 2027	6,000 to 15,000 a month, with a new spike when applications open

The surrounding searches will be bigger still. If 2021 is a guide, searches for what the scheme offers, such as "2.5% deposit", "first time buyer scheme" and "new help to buy", could run at several times the scheme's own name. The demand it will draw on is already there. Here is what first-time buyers search for in a typical month today:

Search term	Searches a month
lifetime isa	~74,000
shared ownership	~27,000
new build homes	~22,000
help to buy isa	~18,000
help to buy	~12,000
help to buy scheme	~12,000
first time buyer mortgage	~9,900
first time buyer stamp duty	~8,100
first homes scheme	~6,600
help to buy equity loan	~3,600
5 deposit mortgage	~2,400
your first home	~20

2 more things in that table matter for tomorrow:

Buyers will use the old names. Help to Buy closed to new applications in 2022, yet "help to buy", "help to buy scheme" and "help to buy equity loan" still draw around 28,000 searches a month between them. Your First Home works the same way, a 20% equity loan on a new build, so expect buyers to search for it as "the new help to buy" for years.
The name is also an everyday phrase. "Your first home" is what people already type in "buying your first home". Pages need to say "Your First Home scheme" in full, in the title and the first line, so Google and AI tools can tell the scheme from general advice.

Once the caps and timings are confirmed, the questions will be about the detail: am I eligible, what is the price cap where I live, how is the equity loan repaid, and can I use it with a Lifetime ISA. The 2.5% deposit is a new search in its own right, too: "5 deposit mortgage" already gets around 2,400 searches a month. Agents and developers who answer those questions on their own sites, in plain English, will catch that demand before the comparison sites do.

What last year's Budget did to search

Rachel Reeves delivered the last Budget on 26 November 2025. Searches for the Budget itself reached around 790,000 that month. The more useful signal is in the property tax terms that buyers and landlords search all year round. Using Semrush's UK data, we estimated their searches in Budget month against a typical month:

Search term	Typical month	November 2025 (Budget month)	Change
mansion tax	~2,000	~175,000	~85-fold
landlord tax	~1,500	~11,000	~7-fold
tax on rental income	~2,000	~4,500	More than doubled
stamp duty	~60,000	No spike	Flat

3 things stand out:

The spike is huge and short. "Mansion tax" searches went from around 2,000 a month to around 175,000 in November, and had already fallen to around 63,000 by December.
New policies create new searches overnight. The "mansion tax" barely registered before the Budget. The demand arrived with the announcement of the High Value Council Tax Surcharge, not before it.
Speculation starts weeks before. "Inheritance tax" peaked in October 2025 at around 278,000 searches, the month before the Budget, as rumours built. "Autumn budget" searches were already climbing through September and October.

What to expect tomorrow

Based on what has been confirmed, ruled out and reported, here is what we expect property search to do.

Topic	What we know before the Budget	Search outlook
Your First Home	Announced 26 September; price caps, income caps and timings due tomorrow	The biggest property search story. Expect a spike in scheme searches, with buyers also using the old "help to buy" name
Mansion tax	Due to start in April 2028 for homes worth over £2 million; reports say a lower £1.5 million threshold has been ruled out	A second wave if any detail changes, from a base that already reached 175,000 searches last year
Landlords and rental income	Rental income tax changes from the last Budget are already in train	Steady interest, sharper if anything new is announced. Last year, "landlord tax" searches rose around 7-fold in Budget month
Stamp duty	Ruled out by the Prime Minister on 27 July	No spike. Even last year's Budget did not move it, but "is stamp duty changing" questions are worth answering
Annual property tax or land value tax	Ruled out for this Budget	A wildcard. "Land value tax" searches climbed through 2026 to around 6,000 in July. Any hint of a future consultation will spike them
Capital gains tax	Reports say full alignment with income tax has been ruled out; smaller changes are still possible	Modest. "Capital gains tax on property" gets around 4,400 searches a month and matters to landlords selling up

What the financial press is predicting

The previews broadly agree that this will be a careful Budget, with the property news in the detail rather than the headlines.

A holding Budget. City AM expects "a holding Budget that preserves confidence": a broadly neutral package, with bigger tax decisions pushed back to 2027.
Your First Home is the main housing story. City AM expects the scheme's detail, covered above, to be the centrepiece for housing.
No lower mansion tax threshold. The Times and the Financial Times both reported that Healey has ruled out cutting the threshold from £2 million to £1.5 million (via Property Week). The surcharge still starts in April 2028.
More money for social housing. The BBC reported that Healey will add more than £1 billion to the Social and Affordable Housing Programme, taking it above £40 billion (via Property Week). The Treasury called the reports speculation.
Smaller moves on capital gains. City AM says full alignment with income tax appears to have been rejected, though smaller rate rises, or ending the capital gains tax relief at death, are still possible.
No land value tax yet. City AM reported in August that an annual land value tax of around 1.3%, replacing stamp duty and council tax, had been ruled out for this Budget.

For search, that all points one way: a quiet Budget on tax, with the new demand in Your First Home.

What it costs to meet the demand on Google Ads

Paid search is the fastest way to be there from day one, while organic pages are still being indexed. There is no click price for "your first home scheme" yet, because nobody has bid on it. The closest guide is what advertisers pay for the scheme and first-time buyer terms around it today, from Semrush's UK data:

Search term	Typical cost per click
first time buyer schemes	£1.03
new build homes	£1.28
help to buy scheme	£1.32
first homes scheme	£1.41
first time buyer help	£1.59
help to buy	£1.60
5 deposit mortgage	£2.05
first time buyer mortgage	£2.45
help to buy equity loan	£5.37
equity loan	£14.29

Scheme terms cost around £1 to £1.60 a click. Mortgage terms cost more, because brokers and lenders bid on them, and anything with "equity loan" in it is expensive, because it overlaps with secured loans. Expect "your first home scheme" to start near the bottom of that range and climb as brokers and comparison sites join in, which is another reason to start early.

To estimate a budget, we applied a 5% click rate (an ad shown on every search, with a typical click rate for search ads) and £1.30 a click to our forecast:

Month	Forecast searches	Clicks at 5%	National budget at £1.30 a click
October 2026	15,000 to 40,000	750 to 2,000	£1,000 to £2,600
November 2026	40,000 to 95,000	2,000 to 4,750	£2,600 to £6,200
December 2026	15,000 to 35,000	750 to 1,750	£1,000 to £2,300
January to March 2027	6,000 to 15,000 a month	300 to 750 a month	£400 to £1,000 a month

That is the national picture for the scheme's name alone. Most agents and developers only need their own patch. A developer selling in one English region, around a tenth of searches, would need roughly £260 to £620 for November. The Help to Buy names are worth covering too: around 28,000 searches a month at an average of about £2 a click is roughly £2,700 a month nationally at the same 5% rate.

4 tips to make that budget work:

Front-load it. Most of the demand arrives on Budget day and in the days after, so put the bulk of the first week's budget on 28 to 31 October, then follow the curve down.
Bid on the scheme, not the phrase. Use "your first home scheme" in phrase or exact match. "Your first home" on its own matches general buying advice and will waste budget.
Send clicks to a page that answers the question. A scheme page with the confirmed caps, an eligibility check and the homes that qualify will convert far better than a homepage.
Check Google's financial services rules first. Ads that promote the equity loan or mortgages can fall under Google's UK financial services verification, so check before launch rather than on Budget day.

What property marketers should do

Today

Make sure your Your First Home page exists, even if it says "details confirmed on 28 October". A page that is already indexed will rank faster when you update it.
Check your stamp duty and first-time buyer pages are current. "Stamp duty calculator" alone gets around 246,000 searches a month.
Draft an email to your buyer and landlord databases, ready to send once the details are known.

Tomorrow afternoon

Publish a short, factual "What the Budget means for buyers, sellers and landlords" explainer within hours. Speed matters more than length: most of the demand arrives in the first few days.
Update your Your First Home page with the confirmed caps and timings, and show the date it was updated.
Post a clear summary on social, with 1 number per post.

This week

Turn on paid search for the new scheme terms while competition is low, using the budget above as a starting point.
Add the confirmed details to development pages and listings, so they show up in AI answers as well as Google.
Brief your sales and lettings teams so enquiries get the same answer your website gives.

The demand from a Budget fades within a month. The pages that capture it are the ones that were ready before it started.

Join us on 26 November

We will cover what the Budget means for property marketing in 2027 at Property Marketing 2027, a free morning event at The Hive in Manchester on Thursday 26 November. Reserve your free seat.

How we measured it: monthly figures are estimated from Semrush's UK average monthly searches and its 12-month trend data, August 2025 to July 2026. First-time buyer figures are Semrush's UK average monthly searches, pulled on 27 October 2026. The 2021 figures are estimated the same way from Semrush's data for August 2020 to July 2021. The Your First Home forecast is our own estimate, not Semrush data: it applies the 2021 scheme's curve to a peak 2 to 5 times higher. Click prices are Semrush's UK average cost per click; the Google Ads budget is our own estimate, assuming a 5% click rate and £1.30 a click. All figures are rounded, and show searches, not outcomes.