Help to buy ISA - house price

freddie8541

My girlfriend and I are looking to buy a house in the next couple of years and are interested in the help to buy ISA. We can obviously get one each.

My question is that on MSE it says that you can buy a house of up to 450k in greater London and 250k outside of London.
Can you combine this allowance? For example can we buy buy a house in London for the two of us worth 900k? or a house worth 500k outside of London? or can we still only buy a house worth 450k/250k respectively?

Many thanks,

bowlhead99

freddie8541 wrote: »

My girlfriend and I are looking to buy a house in the next couple of years and are interested in the help to buy ISA. We can obviously get one each.

My question is that on MSE it says that you can buy a house of up to 450k in greater London and 250k outside of London.
Can you combine this allowance? For example can we buy buy a house in London for the two of us worth 900k? or a house worth 500k outside of London? or can we still only buy a house worth 450k/250k respectively?

Many thanks,

No. You can both use your ISAs together to buy the same house (i.e. £6k of free cash if you wait long enough) but only to buy something up to the limit.

There would be even more public outrage if a couple with the requisite deposit and salary could get £6k of free government money to help them buy a £900k house.

freddie8541

Great thanks for you speedy reply.

Can you put the money towards building a house?

Thanks.

bowlhead99

I think the bonus money gets given direct to your mortgage lender contingent on you actually completing on the purchase of the house (not to your ISA account) and it has to be for a home you are buying to live in (not on building work for something that doesn't exist yet or for the purchase of a BTL property etc).

nasreenrich

If you can only use the bonus to buy a home costing up to £250,000 outside London that could be an issue in cities like Oxford where £250k wont buy much.

eskbanker

nasreenrich wrote: »

If you can only use the bonus to buy a home costing up to £250,000 outside London that could be an issue in cities like Oxford where £250k wont buy much.

No such scheme would suit everyone but worth bearing in mind that this is clearly aimed at first-time buyers who need help to get a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder!

bowlhead99

Exactly. If you don't like what you can get for £250k near Oxford, don't take the free money and don't buy. That will help keep prices low for the rest of us -supply and demand.

The goal of the savings incentive is *not* to help you go from "not being on the property ladder at all", to "being in your ideal dream home for that stage of your life in your ideal location", part funded by the taxpayer.

MARTYM8`

Hope no offence is taken – but if you can afford to pay £900,000 for a property in London I might suggest that you probably don’t need another £6k handout from the taxpayer. More particularly so when we are in a period of austerity when those on low incomes/benefits are facing tough times.

And in the time you wait to accumulate the £3k each – five years under the help to buy ISA – any benefit may well have been wiped out by rising prices.

cashbackproblems

MARTYM8` wrote: »

Hope no offence is taken – but if you can afford to pay £900,000 for a property in London I might suggest that you probably don’t need another £6k handout from the taxpayer. More particularly so when we are in a period of austerity when those on low incomes/benefits are facing tough times.

And in the time you wait to accumulate the £3k each – five years under the help to buy ISA – any benefit may well have been wiped out by rising prices.

No offence but if the scheme allows it why should you care about the morality of it? Its up to the govt to set the rules

And i say this as someone who is trying to scrape together 250-300k for a london flat!

Archi_Bald

I don't think anyone complains about people who quietly take their bonus from the HTB ISA if they qualify for it.

As the bonus is designed to help exactly those people who qualify for it.

grey_gym_sock

you could always each buy a semi-detached house in london for £450,000, each picking up £3,000 from help-to-buy ISAs. and then (if they're adjoining) knock them together into a 1 detached house

you'd probably spend a lot more than £6,000 on converting the detached house into the set-up you wanted. and it'd probably be worth a lot less than £900,000 afterwards.