Halifax HTB ISA

JustAnotherSaver

Sorry if this has been posted but i couldn't see it. If it's within another thread then i've totally missed it.

I can see Nationwide's HTB ISA on their website, full of info.

Not Halifax's though. I'm lead to believe it's 4%, but only from reading on websites such as this & other money websites (not sure if we're allowed to name them here).
When i click on the Halifax website & the ISA section there's very few ISA's listed & not one of them seems to be the HTB ISA.

Could someone please point me in the right direction, or will it just not be listed on their site until actual release date (Tuesday?).

Rich2808

Personally I would still be going for the Nationwide product. It only pays 2% but you are not limited to paying in to a help to buy cash isa only. Why limit yourself to saving £2,400 a year (or £1800 in 2015-16) with the Halifax when you could invest up to £15,240 (including the HTB isa component) with NW.

NW has a save to buy isa paying 2% which allows you to save up to a balance of £20k plus an in year regular saver. If you then take a mortgage out with them you can also get up to £1,750 of incentives.

So I would go with NW personally - the interest differential on such small sums in the early years is tiny in cash terms whereas NW gives you more flexibility.
This of course doesn't preclude you from using current accounts/regular savers to get good interest.

colsten

Rich2808 wrote: »

Personally I would still be going for the Nationwide product. It only pays 2% but you are not limited to paying in to a help to buy cash isa only. Why limit yourself to saving £2,400 a year (or £1800 in 2015-16) with the Halifax when you could invest up to £15,240 (including the HTB isa component) with NW.

If you have more money than the HTB ISA takes, just about the worst place to put is into a cash ISA that pays a terrible interest rate. The Nationwide and Natwest offers to take your additional money into an ISA is a marketing gimmick to catch out people unawares.

2% would be the best a Nationwide non-HTB ISA would presently offer. Even the Nationwide FlexDirect takes £2,500 at 5%, but there are many other options that pay 3-6%. You can put more than £50,000 into such accounts.

A BR tax payer will also have a savings interest allowance of £1,000 from next April, so there's a good chance many people will get all their interest from non-ISA accounts tax free. But even with the current tax regime, no cash ISA is likely to come even close to the interest you can get in other accounts.

JustAnotherSaver: going for the HTB ISA with the best interest rate (currently Halifax) is a no-brainer. You should see the HTB ISAs appear on all the provider's websites in the next couple of days. The earliest you can open one is Tuesday.

JustAnotherSaver

Thanks colsten.

Rich - this isn't for me but my brother & sister who are 23 & 24 respectively. I'm looking in to it for them to help them as they would both be FTBs.
I understand what you're saying but the idea i had would be to max out the Halifax HTB ISA (my brother - my sister wouldn't be able to afford to) & then put the remainder of (his) savings in to ... a FlexDirect account at 5% or a TSB account at i believe 4%? a BOS account up to £5000 at 3%?
Sure you pay tax on these accounts but they're still better than a 2% ISA even after tax has been taken. I would pay tax all day long in an account if it STILL earns me more money than a tax-exempt account would.


When i was saving for my house, when i became 'money aware' i did everything i possibly could to squeeze an extra few quid out & it all helped. Opening accounts for bonuses & then closing them again. Stoozing even just for a few quid. Having god knows how many accounts (i'm sure i counted over 20 cards at my most) because so many had limits (FlexDirect being 1 example).

So i'm just trying to help them out the same way as any help is better than no help. The way i see it is if there's free money there, take as much as you can.

Rich2808

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Thanks colsten.

Rich - this isn't for me but my brother & sister who are 23 & 24 respectively. I'm looking in to it for them to help them as they would both be FTBs.
I understand what you're saying but the idea i had would be to max out the Halifax HTB ISA (my brother - my sister wouldn't be able to afford to) & then put the remainder of (his) savings in to ... a FlexDirect account at 5% or a TSB account at i believe 4%? a BOS account up to £5000 at 3%?
Sure you pay tax on these accounts but they're still better than a 2% ISA even after tax has been taken. I would pay tax all day long in an account if it STILL earns me more money than a tax-exempt account would.


When i was saving for my house, when i became 'money aware' i did everything i possibly could to squeeze an extra few quid out & it all helped. Opening accounts for bonuses & then closing them again. Stoozing even just for a few quid. Having god knows how many accounts (i'm sure i counted over 20 cards at my most) because so many had limits (FlexDirect being 1 example).

So i'm just trying to help them out the same way as any help is better than no help. The way i see it is if there's free money there, take as much as you can.

I agree about the 4% and 5% current accounts - the TSB account is good too given the regular saver at 5% and the 5% rebate on contactless payments up to £5 a month and one year regular savers with First Direct, HSBC.

But once you exhaust the ones paying more than 3% you are better off as a higher rate taxpayer in a 2% isa - assuming the priority is keeping cash for a house deposit.

I just don't see how anyone who isn't a higher rate taxpayer could afford to buy a property in London now - bar the most awful areas or in the less nice bits of zone 5-6.

Cash isas are not for everyone now but if you want to stay in cash for a house deposit as an FTB and are a higher rate taxpayer they are a useful extra option. And given the incentives NW offer on their other isas on top of the HTB product its worth looking at.

I wish your siblings luck - prices are so expensive now in much of the country.

colsten

Rich2808 wrote: »

But once you exhaust the ones paying more than 3% you are better off as a higher rate taxpayer in a 2% isa - assuming the priority is keeping cash for a house deposit.

It takes £50,000 to exhaust just the current accounts, and regular savers take another £17K a year!

Rich2808 wrote: »

Cash isas are not for everyone now but if you want to stay in cash for a house deposit as an FTB and are a higher rate taxpayer they are a useful extra option.

really? Can you provide the figures that support this?

Rich2808 wrote: »

And given the incentives NW offer on their other isas on top of the HTB product its worth looking at.

How? You sound as if you are from the Nationwide Marketing department as you have by now peddled just about every Nationwide account that makes Nationwide a lot of money and is of questionable value for a First Time Buyer (Save To Buy ISA, FlexPlus, Regular Saver).

Please show worked examples that demonstrate how First Time Buyers will benefit from putting all their money into Nationwide.

masonic

Rich2808 wrote: »

I just don't see how anyone who isn't a higher rate taxpayer could afford to buy a property in London now - bar the most awful areas or in the less nice bits of zone 5-6.

Why mention London or higher rate tax? Has the OP shared this info outside of the thread, or are you just assuming. The majority of people don't live in London and aren't higher rate taxpayers, so it seems like a pretty poor assumption if that's what it is.

Rich2808

I have provided circumstances where my advice is correct. It's up to people to apply their circumstances.

And might I suggest that if you are about to apply for a mortgage than making lots of current account applications which show as credit searches may not be the best policy.

So let's leave it at that!

YorkshireBoy

Rich2808 wrote: »

And might I suggest that if you are about to apply for a mortgage than making lots of current account applications which show as credit searches may not be the best policy.

I think most people considering using the HTB ISA will be in it for the medium term of 3-5 years (and certainly over a year), ie allowing for the small monthly payments to build up so that the 25% lump is worth more...by which time the effect of the searches on the mortgage application, if any (and personally I don't think there would be), will be minimal.

So let's leave it at that!

Oops, sorry!

JustAnotherSaver

Just for the record...

None of us, my brother, my sister or I are lucky enough to earn enough money in a year to put us anywhere near the higher tax bracket.

We also live quite some distance from London.

I appreciate that advice for higher rate tax payers will not be the same as advice given to someone like ourselves, but at the end of the day, i don't too much care for it since none of us are likely to ever be higher rate tax payers.

Rich2808 wrote: »

And might I suggest that if you are about to apply for a mortgage than making lots of current account applications which show as credit searches may not be the best policy.

On a personal note ... been there done that.

Yeah it flagged up when we went through it & the lender (Nationwide for the record) wanted to know how i had managed to get such a sizeable deposit at such a 'young age'.
So i simply explained the situation via my IFA & the problem was resolved very quickly.

DragonQ

Surely I can open this HTB ISA and shove the maximum into it each month until a better ISA product comes along (after April 2016) and just take all the money out and shove it in the new one?

I can't benefit from the government bonus anyway but I may as well use this as a 4% regular saver since there's no point getting another type of ISA in this tax year.