Affordable purchase and Starter Homes scheme software for local authorities
The Government put every starter home support under one umbrella. Rentalize Select runs the Starter Home Purchase Scheme (formerly LAAPS, the Local Authority Affordable Purchase Scheme) and Cost Rental applications today, in one system with one allocations engine.
What the Starter Homes Programme is
The Starter Homes Programme was published by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on 13 November 2025. It gives people the chance to buy or rent their first home, and its stated purpose is to bring all existing affordability supports together under one umbrella, making them easier to access and more visible.
Under Delivering Homes, Building Communities, the target is 15,000 Starter Home supports every year until 2030. Budget 2026 committed an increased capital allocation of EUR 1.2 billion to deliver 7,500 affordable purchase and cost rental homes in 2026, alongside EUR 250 million for lending under the Local Authority Home Loan, from a record department package of EUR 11.275 billion.
For councils, the important word is umbrella. The brand is now single and public-facing. The administration underneath it is not: each scheme keeps its own eligibility rules, its own evidence requirements and its own allocation method. Several councils have already renamed their pages, with Cork County Council publishing under "Starter Homes (formerly Affordable Housing)" and South Dublin County Council running a Starter Homes Programme section.
Affordable purchase scheme software, under its new name
If you are searching for affordable purchase scheme software, LAAPS software or affordable housing application software, this is the same thing. The scheme councils have administered as the Local Authority Affordable Purchase Scheme, commonly shortened to LAAPS, is presented to the public as the Starter Home Purchase Scheme under the Starter Homes Programme.
The rename does not change the eligibility rules, the equity share mechanism or the council's administrative duties. It does mean two vocabularies are now in use at once: your applicants increasingly arrive using the Government's new wording, while your own files, reports and internal processes still say affordable purchase or LAAPS. Rentalize Select handles both, so the public-facing site can use the new naming while your officers keep working in the terms they already use.
Five schemes in the umbrella. Four land on your desk.
The Starter Home Supports hub groups five schemes for buyers, renters and renovators. Two of them are administered centrally. The rest are administered by local authorities, which is where the workload actually falls.
| Scheme | What it does | Who administers it | In Rentalize Select |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter Home Purchase Scheme formerly Local Authority Affordable Purchase |
Shared equity with your local authority. The council takes a percentage stake matching the discount on the price. | Local authority | Yes |
| Cost Rental Scheme | Affordable rents for middle income earners, at least 25% below market rent. | LAs, AHBs and the LDA | Intake and allocation Eligibility checks on the roadmap |
| Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant | Up to EUR 70,000 towards renovating a vacant or derelict property. | Local authority | Not in the product today |
| Local Authority Home Loan | Government-backed mortgage for first-time buyers who cannot get adequate finance from a bank. EUR 250 million available for lending in 2026. | Local authority | Not in the product today |
| Help to Buy | Income tax and DIRT refund towards a deposit. | Revenue | Not council-run |
| First Home Scheme | Shared equity on a private market purchase, funded with participating banks. | First Home Scheme DAC | Not council-run |
Applicants do not see this split. They see one Government brand and expect one front door. When the schemes sit in separate spreadsheets, separate inboxes and separate forms, that gap becomes your complaint volume.
Purchase and Cost Rental in one system
A household that does not qualify for the Starter Home Purchase Scheme is often a good fit for Cost Rental. If those live in different systems, that household re-applies from scratch and your team re-verifies the same documents. In Rentalize Select both schemes run in one system, and each application is checked against the rules of the scheme it was made to.
Two schemes in, one system, one decision trail out
Starter Home Purchase and Cost Rental applications, each checked against its own scheme rules
Each application checked against its scheme's rules
- Eligibility checked automatically per scheme (Cost Rental on the roadmap)
- Affordability assessed in about ten seconds
- A document confidence score on every submitted application
- Statutory priority order, or a Cost Rental lottery
- ID and document checks, and fraud checks on submitted documents
- Every change to an application logged
Starter Home Purchase
Public scheme listing site, online application with document upload, income and mortgage-capacity assessment, equity share calculation, and allocation in statutory priority order that decides who is offered which unit. This is the scheme Rentalize Select has run for a local authority since 2022.
Cost Rental
Application intake, document collection, a document confidence score and lottery allocation on the same applicant record, with a full audit trail of every draw. Automated net household income testing against the Cost Rental limits and the rent-to-income affordability ceiling is on the roadmap, not in the product today, so officers verify income from the documents held on the record. Cost Rental is legally and operationally distinct from differential rent.
Tell an applicant where they stand in about ten seconds
Most of the workload in an affordability scheme is not assessing the people who qualify. It is handling the people who never could, and the phone calls that follow. Select tests eligibility at the front door, before an application is ever submitted.
Instant affordability assessment
The applicant enters household income, deposit and household size and gets an affordability position back in about ten seconds, including the mortgage capacity the scheme assumes and the equity share the council would hold.
Automatic eligibility check
The scheme rules are applied automatically: first-time-buyer status, right to reside, the 10% minimum deposit and the affordability test against the home's market value.
Document confidence score
A document confidence score shows how closely each applicant's documents match what they declared. Officers see the eligibility result and the score on every submitted application. The order of allocation is set by your scheme's rule: date order, statutory priority or a lottery.
Fewer unqualified applications
Screening at the front door means the applications that reach your team are the ones worth assessing. That is the single biggest lever on both officer workload and applicant satisfaction, because a fast honest no beats a slow maybe.
First come first served or a Cost Rental lottery, both defensible
Councils do not allocate the same way, and the method has to survive scrutiny. Select supports the allocation models councils actually use and records the evidence that the model was applied correctly.
First come first served. Ranked strictly by verified submission time, with the timestamp captured at submission and visible in the audit log.
Lottery engine for Cost Rental. Randomised draws across the eligible pool, with the draw seed, the pool at the moment of the draw and the resulting order all recorded so the outcome can be reproduced and explained.
Statutory priority. Statutory order of priority for the Starter Home Purchase Scheme, set per development.
Offers and cascades. In a Cost Rental lottery, a declined or lapsed offer passes to the next applicant on the waitlist automatically.
A record you can stand over. Every allocation decision carries who did what, when, under which rule, which is what a council needs when a decision is questioned by an applicant, a councillor or an auditor.
Built for public money and public scrutiny
Document and ID verification
The name, date of birth and nationality on the uploaded ID are checked against the application, and mismatches are flagged for an officer.
Fraud checks
Fraud checks run on submitted documents when the full document set is provided. A PPSN can only be used on one applicant account, and income that does not match the documents is flagged for an officer.
Full audit logs
Every change to an application, applicant, household or allocation is logged with the user, the time and the before and after values, and every lottery draw and allocation queue has an audit report.
Two-way portal messaging
Applicants and officers correspond inside the case, so the thread stays attached to the record instead of sitting in one officer's inbox.
SMS notifications
Deadline, document and offer notifications by SMS as well as email, which is what moves response rates on time-limited offers.
Reporting
Dashboards on application volumes, statuses and allocations, with CSV export and an audit report for every allocation queue and lottery draw.
A scheme launch is a traffic event
When a development goes live, demand arrives in hours, not weeks. The public-facing side has to hold up on a phone, on a bad connection, at nine in the morning on launch day.
A listing site for your schemes
A branded public site for your developments, with live filters, scheme detail, eligibility guidance and an apply button that starts the right application. It is the front door applicants are sent to from your own website.
Modern forms that survive real life
Full auto draft save, resumable across devices, clear validation, and upload that works from a phone camera. Applicants abandon long forms, not complicated ones.
Built to take the surge
Built for scheme launches, where demand arrives in hours. We size each opening with you before the window opens, so it does not become the story.
Already running this scheme for a council
Rentalize Select has administered the affordable purchase scheme, now the Starter Home Purchase Scheme, for Meath County Council since 2022, replacing manual processes with a public-facing portal that accepts, verifies and processes applications at scale.
Meath County Council are delighted with the solution provided to administer the scheme and have found Rentalize accommodating and professional in delivering their service.
Live for the next scheme, not the one after that
Scheme windows are set by delivery dates, not by software timelines. Select is configured to your scheme rules rather than rebuilt, which is why go-live is measured in weeks.
Configuration, not development. Income limits, deposit rules, priority criteria and allocation method are settings, so a rule change is an afternoon rather than a release.
Officer training that takes an afternoon. An interactive in-app guide plus process flows for each scheme workflow.
Fast support responses. Fast support responses by email and phone, with each scheme launch planned with you.
Procurement-ready security. Rentalize is working towards ISO 27001 certification, with controls aligned to ISO 27018 and 27701 guidance. We do not hold these certificates yet, so check the current status against your security questionnaire.
Questions councils ask
Is the Starter Homes Programme a new scheme?
Not a new scheme, a new umbrella. The Starter Homes Programme, published on 13 November 2025, brings existing supports together under one public brand so they are easier to find and access. The Local Authority Affordable Purchase Scheme is now presented as the Starter Home Purchase Scheme, and several councils have already renamed their pages. The underlying eligibility rules and the council's administrative duties continue.
Which Starter Homes schemes does a local authority actually administer?
Four of them: the Starter Home Purchase Scheme, Cost Rental where the council is the delivery body, the Local Authority Home Loan, and the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant. Help to Buy is administered by Revenue and the First Home Scheme by a separate designated activity company with participating banks, so neither generates council application workload.
Can one system handle purchase, cost rental and loans together?
Purchase and cost rental, yes. Rentalize Select runs the Starter Home Purchase Scheme and Cost Rental applications today, and each application is checked against the rules of the scheme it was made to. Local Authority Home Loan and Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant applications are not in the product. Automated Cost Rental eligibility testing is on the roadmap.
Does it support a lottery as well as first come first served?
Yes. Starter Home Purchase applications are allocated first come first served in statutory priority order, and Cost Rental uses the lottery engine. The lottery engine records the draw seed, the eligible pool at the moment of the draw and the resulting order, so the outcome can be reproduced and explained if it is questioned. First come first served ranks on the verified submission timestamp captured at submission.
How many applications can it take at once?
It is built for scheme launches, where demand arrives in hours rather than weeks. Rentalize Select has processed more than 200,000 applications with zero downtime through intake peaks, including a single week of 4,600. Before a scheme opens, we size the launch with you against the expected volume and opening time.
How long does implementation take?
Weeks rather than quarters, because scheme rules are configuration rather than development. Income limits, deposit thresholds, priority criteria and the allocation method are settings, so they can be changed when the rules change.
How is applicant data protected?
Every change to an application, applicant, household or allocation is logged with the user, the time and the before and after values, and every lottery draw and allocation queue has an audit report. ISO 27001 certification is in progress, with controls aligned to ISO 27018 and 27701 guidance.
Sources
- Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Starter Homes Programme, published 13 November 2025.
- Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Starter Home Supports, the five-scheme hub.
- Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Budget 2026 press release, EUR 1.2 billion for 7,500 affordable purchase and cost rental homes, EUR 250 million for Local Authority Home Loan lending.
- Citizens Information, Local Authority Affordable Purchase Scheme.
Tools and guides for scheme teams
Run Starter Home Purchase and Cost Rental from one system
Book a walkthrough with your scheme rules in front of you. We will show the applicant journey, the officer queue and the allocation record end to end.