Help and advice needed.

J_M_H87

Hi everyone,
First of all can I thank you for reading and I look forward to your responses. We are looking for responses from people who have knowledge of first buyer schemes as Ive phoned 2 separate ‘advisors’ and didn’t get the response/ advice I was after.
Myself and my girlfriend are looking to buy our first house together. Yesterday we found a new build site with a lovely 3 bed place on site and we really like it. The house outright to purchase is £177,995. We have a deposit of £18,000 and are currently earning £25,000ish each. Now we could buy the house out right but because we only have a 10% deposit we’d be paying through the teeth monthly on the mortgage.
Now because this is a new build and we are first time buyers there are a couple of schemes that we can use. The first is a shared equity scheme where the price goes down to £131,246 meaning the developer (?) owns a % but I don’t fully understand the other implications other than the mortgage would be a lot more manageable etc (a lot of mortgage companies seemingly mixing this up with shared ownership?, if there is any difference?). The other scheme is first buy. Where you get up to a 20% of the property value in an interest free loan for 5 years. Once again not sure on how you get out this system and implications of it.
Now given our situation which would you recommend buying outright, shared equity or first buy? Any other advice tips/ websites/ brokers who would know more would as be very helpful.



Thanks again from a very confused newbie!