Help to Buy: Nudging aspiring homeowners to realise that Help to Buy was here to help

Owning a home is an aspiration for millions of Britons. Yet in early 2013, many people couldn''t afford mortgage deposits. In response, the UK Government introduced two initiatives which meant buyers would only need to provide 5 per cent cash deposits. The task for communications was to increase public engagement with the schemes and scheme-related sales. However, whilst many potential buyers were aware of the incentives, they wrongly believed they were restricted to specific groups such as key workers. By leveraging behavioural ''nudge'' insights, this campaign succeeded in broadening the range of people who saw ''Help to Buy'' as relevant to them. It is estimated that in two years the two schemes between them enabled more than 150,000 buyers to purchase homes. By facilitating demand for homes, the programmes supported the building of an estimated 19,600 incremental homes in 2014 that would otherwise not have been built, putting an extra 2.5bn in expenditure into the UK economy.