The Chancellor's measures for first-time buyers will make a generation spoilt by easy credit pause for thought. The absence of handouts aims to teach young professionals with a “buy now, pay later” mindset that saving must come before owning. The year-long stamp-duty holiday introduced in September for properties under £175,000 has not been extended. Although this policy successfully enables some to take advantage of falling prices, the £175,000 threshold is too low to benefit buyers in many areas.

An extension of the exemption to £250,000 would have been a realistic way of reaching out to aspiring homeowners, although the Chancellor may have felt that this would do more for the investors who are already snapping up bargains at auction. The Chancellor has instead acted on the advice of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to introduce a tax-free saving scheme for first-time buyers to build up a deposit. But with the increase in National Insurance contributions hitting young earners, this may be too small an incentive, as most people in this bracket already struggle to put money aside. With the new savings accounts mimicking current ISAs, this seems little more than the relabelling of an existing route. A hidden factor is the increased tax that will now affect high-income parents; aspiring homeowners who had intended to rely on parental deposits may now find them less forthcoming.

The existing shared-ownership schemes on offer have not been expanded; many have not been taken up in the absence of mortgage deals for those with small deposits. In effect, the Government is backing the banks' reluctance to create another wave of buyers who are reliant on mortgages with high loan-to-value ratios.

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