Help to Buy and owning existing home

Dunx76

I looking for any suggestions on this topic. Basically I own a house already that I live in with wife and child. We are looking to move to a new build and use the Help to Buy equity loan scheme. In order to do this we need to sell the current house to meet the criteria. This gives us a few problems:

1. Our house may sell but the propery we are buying may be many months away from completion. We would then need to find somewhere to live for a short period, not easy with a 1 year old.
2. Our house may not sell quickly enough if we buy a house close to completion. This may mean dropping the sell price for a quick sale, which I don't really want to do.

We have enough savings that we don't need to sell before proceeding with the purchase, but have to sell to meet the rules.

My question is this. Are there any legal ways of overcoming this problem. Ideally what I would like to do is get the new house bought with savings then market the house afterwards to maximise my sell price.

Thanks in advance.

zarf2007

Dunx76 wrote: »

I looking for any suggestions on this topic. Basically I own a house already that I live in with wife and child. We are looking to move to a new build and use the Help to Buy equity loan scheme. In order to do this we need to sell the current house to meet the criteria. This gives us a few problems:

1. Our house may sell but the propery we are buying may be many months away from completion. We would then need to find somewhere to live for a short period, not easy with a 1 year old.
2. Our house may not sell quickly enough if we buy a house close to completion. This may mean dropping the sell price for a quick sale, which I don't really want to do.

We have enough savings that we don't need to sell before proceeding with the purchase, but have to sell to meet the rules.

My question is this. Are there any legal ways of overcoming this problem. Ideally what I would like to do is get the new house bought with savings then market the house afterwards to maximise my sell price.

Thanks in advance.

Does the new build developer offer part exchange? that might be one option...

Dunx76

zarf2007 wrote: »

Does the new build developer offer part exchange? that might be one option...

Unfortunately the help to buy rules don't allow the builder to offer part ex.

amnblog

This sell and buy timing issue is the basis of the sale/purchase chain that buyers deal with every day.

If you don't want to have a chain, you may have to rent for a while or move in with family for a few weeks.

glasgowgirl80

If you own you current house by yourself (i.e. not jointly with your wife) then she could apply for HTB and get a sole mortgage on the new property while yours sells. That all depends on income etc, but its what I have just done. My husband owned his house and it was on the market, meanwhile I applied for HTB to buy our new house on my own. As it turned out, his house sold well before we we due to move into the new house but we had to move very quickly so for us it was the best option.

There are pitfalls to the above obviously and it depends whether she can afford the mortgage on her own (I could but it was always our plan to buy a house that was affordanble on one salary anyway), but for us it was the best solution in our circumstances.

Verix

With regards to his wife trying to do it on her own; depending on the home buy agency this might not work as they will ask whether the husband owns any properties to which she'd have to answer yes and they'd throw it out unfortunately.

Your best bet is probably finding a potential rental property or family member to live with in the short term.

kingstreet

I agree with Verix.

You have to disclose to the HTB Agent anyone to be resident in the property and explain why they won't be party to the mortgage nor the purchase and that they own no other property.

It may be different in Scotland.