The State shared-equity stake and the service charge over time.
State equity stake
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Funding gap to cover
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First-year service charge (from year 6)
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Your breakdown
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How shared equity actually works
The First Home Scheme is not a loan and not a grant. The State, alongside the participating banks, takes a stake in your new home in return for paying part of the purchase price. You own the house and live in it, but a percentage of its value belongs to the scheme until you buy that share back. The stake can be up to 30 percent of the price, or 20 percent if you are also using Help to Buy. You can redeem it in chunks whenever you choose, or when you eventually sell, and the amount you repay rises and falls with the value of the property.
This calculator works out the realistic stake for your numbers. It takes the percentage you want, applies the 30 percent ceiling, and crucially caps the result at the funding gap left once your deposit and mortgage are in.
The funding gap sets the ceiling
The scheme only fills the hole between what you can fund yourself and the price of the home. So before the percentage even matters, the calculator finds your gap: price minus deposit minus mortgage. If the percentage you ask for would cover more than that gap, the stake is trimmed to the gap, because the scheme will not hand you more than you need to complete the purchase. This is the single most misunderstood part of the scheme, and it is why two buyers asking for the same percentage can end up with very different stakes.
It also means a bigger mortgage or a larger deposit shrinks the stake you can take. That sounds obvious, but it has a real planning consequence: if you stretch your borrowing to the maximum the Central Bank allows, you may find the scheme contributes very little, since there is barely a gap left to fill. Some buyers deliberately borrow a touch less so the scheme can carry more of the price interest-free in those early years. Run both versions through the tool before you settle on a mortgage size.
A €420,000 new build with a €90,000 stake
Consider a couple buying a new home for 420,000 euro. They have a 30,000 euro deposit and mortgage approval for 300,000 euro, and they request a 25 percent First Home Scheme stake. On paper 25 percent of 420,000 euro is 105,000 euro, but their funding gap is only 90,000 euro, so the stake is capped at 90,000 euro.
The bar below shows how the 420,000 euro price is funded: deposit, mortgage, and the 90,000 euro the scheme contributes to close the gap.
The clock on the service charge
The stake is interest-free for the first five years. From year six a service charge kicks in, and in our example that is 1,575 euro a year on the 90,000 euro stake. The charge is applied to whatever portion of the stake is still outstanding, so paying down the stake early reduces it. The rate steps up again in later years, which is a deliberate nudge to redeem the equity over time rather than carry it indefinitely. My practical advice is to treat the first five interest-free years as a window to build savings, then start buying back the stake before the charges bite.
Can I use Help to Buy and the First Home Scheme together?
Yes, and many buyers do. Help to Buy provides a tax refund toward your deposit, while the First Home Scheme closes the remaining gap. Using both means your scheme stake is capped at 20 percent rather than 30 percent, because Help to Buy has already done some of the heavy lifting on the deposit side.
What happens to the stake when I sell?
When you sell, you repay the same percentage of the sale price that the scheme originally funded, not the euro amount it put in. If the home has risen in value, you repay more than you received, and if it has fallen, you repay less. That shared upside is the trade-off for the help, so factor it into your sums before committing.