Help to buy ISA questions

houseownerwannabe_2

My partner and I both have help to buy ISAs with £2000 each at the minute, we will be putting in another 200 each at the start of May hopefully. So with a combined total of 4400, am I right in assuming we will get £1100 from the government?

Also how do we 'pay' this towards the deposit? Do we just give account details to our solicitor, does he then cash them in? I'm not getting a lot of feedback from the solicitor despite many emails so I'm just a bit confused about the whole thing!

Thanks

rtho782

It's a bit of a nightmare, we are currently in a similar position. I don't think it helps that as it's a new scheme the solicitors themselves don't really have a clue.

Buying a house with a 5% deposit, have £4,400 between us in H2B ISAs.

Yes it means a £1,100 bonus, although the solicitor is charging us £50 per ISA to claim the bonus, this seems to be standard.

You have to close the ISA (speak to bank) and withdraw the cash to your/your solicitors bank account, the bank give you a certificate you give to the solicitor. You sign a declaration reference not owning any houses previously etc.

The solicitor then goes online and claims the money.

The issue is that the bonus is for completion not exchange, so we're still not clear if we have to now put up a larger than 5% deposit - 5% at exchange, then an additional £1,100 at completion from the bonus.

The system seems overly complex to me.

houseownerwannabe_2

Wow that does sound complicated! We've been asked to pay £5000 on exchange with the rest on completion but also have to add on money for extras we are buying like carpets etc. I'm so confused with this whole house buying thing!

Is it standard to pay some money on exchange then the rest on completion?

WorriedFTB_2

We have just exchanged
Closed the Isas a while ago
At the exchange I had to send our deposit exclusing the ISA bonus .
The solicitor is to have the bonus paid into his account anytime now . So he said that once the money is in his acc he will send to ours .
We are due to complete Thursday , fingers and toes crossed

in fact complicated and some may think it is missleading beacause buyers are still need to prove that they have the whole phisical deposit .....

Ayslynne

My partner and I are currently in the process of buying a property and we had a Help to Buy ISA. We had ours through Bank of Scotland (Halifax) and we just had to go into our nearest branch where they closed down the accounts and gave us each a closure letter, I then emailed these to our solicitor and he did the claiming from his end. We met with him today and he had a form to fill in that we needed to sign to say this was our only property and that we were first time buyers etc. He then uploads that online and the government will pay the bonus to the solicitor bank account within 5 working days. He said it can then either be used as either part of the deposit or to pay our solicitor fees as it won't make much difference because our deposit and solicitor fee money will be going into the same account when we transfer the money.

Hope that helps!