Measures set out by the chancellor in his new budget to help first-time buyers will only have a modest impact, the property industry has argued.

To boost the property sector, chancellor George Osborne launched a new shared equity scheme, called First Buy, to help first-time buyers who want to purchase a newly built property, but who cannot afford the high deposits.

He said this proposal, involving a £250 million commitment from the proceeds of this year’s bank, will help 10,000 families get on to the housing ladder for the first time.

Peter Williams, executive director of the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA), pointed out that the 10,000 borrowers the chancellor mentioned would ‘only equate to a 5 per cent rise in the number of loans to first-time buyers compared with 2010 numbers’.

Bob Pannell, chief economist at the Council of Mortgage Lenders, added that the First Buy scheme was not an original idea, and was pretty much the same as Labour’s successful HomeBuy Direct scheme. He argued that the ‘modest’ measures laid out in the budget were unlikely to create any fundamentally different landscape for home-buyers.

‘Chancellor Osborne has adhered closely to the fiscal script set out in his first Budget,’ said Pannell ‘Today's indirect tax announcements will marginally soften the impact of significant fiscal cuts for household finances, but do not alter our forecast of a challenging year for households and the housing market this year.’

The budget also delivered a reduction in stamp duty and simplification of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

The chancellor also added that Support for Mortgage Interest scheme would be extended for another year. ‘That will reduce mortgage arrears for around 100,000 out-of-work homeowners,’ he said.

Ian Fletcher, director of policy at the British Property Federation, accepted that the budget delivered as much as it could.

He said, 'This package broadly makes sense, because it targets home deposits, and is about as much as the government could realistically do in current circumstances.’

However, he said refined policies were merely helping house builders sell unsold stock targets and suggested a better use of such government aid would be to homes yet to be built or completed.