HALF of first-time buyers and key workers are confused or have never heard about the government’s shared equity schemes, which allow cash-strapped borrowers to part-buy a property, a survey showed today.

Some 48 per cent of people surveyed by propertyfinder.com, a property website, said they either did not know whether they qualified for a shared equity scheme, had never heard of them or found them too confusing to apply for.

Opposition MPs have attacked the schemes for doing little to help struggling first-time buyers get their foot on the property ladder.

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat shadow housing minister, said: “This is yet another example of Gordon Brown baffling the very people he is trying to help.".

Of the 13 per cent of first-time buyers and key workers who said they were certain they would not qualify for the schemes, 85 per cent would.

Nicholas Leeming, director of propertyfinder.com, said: “There’s widespread ignorance amongst the government’s target market. Almost one in four of those earning less than £30,000 have never even heard of the schemes and little effort is being made by the government to publicise or actually make these schemes in any way accessible.

"If everyone who does qualify did apply, the money simply wouldn’t be there. No wonder the government has been keeping stumm.”

Since the beginning of the year, shared equity schemes have helped just over 9,000 first time buyers and key workers onto the housing ladder.

Last month, government ministers announced a £1.6 billion property rescue deal, which included a stamp-duty freeze and a new shared-equity scheme, where the government and house-builders lend up to 30 per cent of the value of a property interest-free for five years. Buyers find the remaining 70 per cent from a lender.

The initiative, known as Homebuy Direct, is available to 10,000 first-time buyers with a household income of less than £60,000 who are looking to buy a new-build property.