Affordable purchase and Starter Homes scheme software for local authorities
The Government put every starter home support under one umbrella. Rentalize Select puts every application under one system: the Starter Home Purchase Scheme (formerly LAAPS, the Local Authority Affordable Purchase Scheme), Cost Rental, the Local Authority Home Loan and vacant property grants, with one applicant record and 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 | Yes |
| Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant | Up to EUR 70,000 towards renovating a vacant or derelict property. | Local authority | Yes |
| 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 | Yes |
| 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.
One applicant record across every scheme
A household that does not qualify for the Starter Home Purchase Scheme is often a good fit for Cost Rental, or for the Local Authority Home Loan. If those live in different systems, that household re-applies from scratch and your team re-verifies the same documents. In Rentalize Select the record is created once and tested against every scheme you run.
Starter Home Purchase
Public scheme listing site, online application with document upload, income and mortgage-capacity assessment, equity share calculation, and the order of priority or lottery draw that decides who is offered which unit. This is the scheme Rentalize Select has run for a local authority since 2022.
Cost Rental
Net household income testing against the current limits, the rent-to-income affordability ceiling, and the requirement that rents sit at least 25% below market. Cost Rental is legally and operationally distinct from differential rent, and it is modelled as its own scheme rather than bolted onto a social housing workflow.
Local Authority Home Loan
Application intake, income and employment evidence, affordability assessment and the credit-file document pack, tracked through to decision with a full audit trail. Property price limits and the single income limit changed on 1 April 2026, so the rule set is configurable rather than hard-coded.
Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant
Grant application intake up to EUR 70,000, property and vacancy evidence, inspection scheduling, staged approvals and payment milestones, with every decision and document attached to the same applicant record.
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 with advice
The rules for each scheme are configured once and applied automatically: first-time-buyer status, right to reside indefinitely in the State, the 10% minimum deposit and the income limits for your area. Where someone fails one scheme, they are told which of your other schemes they should look at instead.
AI applicant scoring
Applications are scored against the scheme criteria so officers review a ranked, evidenced queue rather than a flat list. The reasoning is shown, so an officer can confirm or override it and the override is recorded.
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 lottery draw, 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. 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.
Priority and banding. Order of priority against the criteria set for the scheme or the individual development.
Offers and cascades. When an offer is declined or lapses, the next eligible applicant is brought forward automatically against the same rule, so the sequence never has to be rebuilt by hand.
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
Identity and evidence checked as part of the application rather than by email afterwards, with expiry tracking on anything time-limited.
Fraud detection
Duplicate and inconsistent applications are flagged for officer review, including repeat identities and mismatched income evidence across schemes.
Digital signature
Dual-party e-signing on declarations, offers and contracts, so an accepted offer is executed in the system instead of by post.
Full audit logs
Every view, edit, score, override and allocation is recorded against a named user and timestamp.
Consent management
GDPR consent captured, versioned and withdrawable, with retention set per document type so statutory records are kept and the rest are not.
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.
One-click reporting
Scheme, allocation and pipeline reports for management, elected members and the Department, exported branded to PDF or CSV.
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
Designed for thousands of concurrent applicants at a scheme launch, so the window opening 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.
Guided setup and bulk import. Existing applicant lists, developments and documents are imported with column mapping and error reports.
Officer training that takes an afternoon. An interactive in-app guide plus process flows for each scheme workflow.
Fast support responses. Support tickets are raised and tracked in the system, and a scheme launch is treated as the event it is.
Procurement-ready. Rentalize holds ISO 27001, 27018 and 27701, the certifications public sector buyers ask for at the security questionnaire stage.
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?
Yes, and that is the point of Rentalize Select. Each scheme keeps its own rule set, evidence requirements and allocation method, but the applicant record, the document vault, the messaging thread and the audit log are shared. A household assessed for the Starter Home Purchase Scheme can be tested against Cost Rental or the Local Authority Home Loan without applying again.
Does it support a lottery as well as first come first served?
Both, along with priority and banding. 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 has processed 4,600 applications in a single week for a local authority scheme, and the public-facing side is designed for thousands of concurrent applicants.
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, as they did for the Local Authority Home Loan on 1 April 2026.
How is applicant data protected?
Consent is captured, versioned and withdrawable, retention is set per document type so statutory records are kept while the rest are not, and every view, edit, score and allocation decision is written to an audit log against a named user. Rentalize holds ISO 27001, 27018 and 27701.
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 every Starter Homes scheme 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.