Help to buy ISA - Halifax and conveyancer question

thomas8232

Hi,

We are about's to start the 'solicitor' process with buying our house. And have a question in regards to a help to buy ISA.

The contracts with the Solicitor has no information of applying for the 'bonus money' or if it will be a extra cost. We have to close the account with Halifax and get a document to give to the conveyancer.

My questions are :-

1. Will the solicitor charge extra for this? (I understand this will be cleared up on Monday when she replies to her email. But it is the weekend and I want answers )

2. Will applying for this money from the government slow the process down? Has anyone applied for this?


Thanks,

Tom

MARTYM8`

First thing to do is check your conveyancer/solicitor is registered to claim the help to buy isa bonus from the government. Not all of them are and not all of them can be bothered as the maximum they can charge for doing this is £60 i.e. £50 plus vat

If they aren't or won't you wont be able to claim the bonus from them.

https://www.helptobuyportal.org.uk/

So check ASAP. If the bonus is material to you you will then have to consider whether its worth changing solicitors.

Elfbert

MARTYM8` wrote: »

First thing to do is check your conveyancer/solicitor is registered to claim the help to buy isa bonus from the government. Not all of them are and not all of them can be bothered as the maximum they can charge for doing this is £60 i.e. £50 plus vat

I asked my conveyancer and he said he couldn't believe people charged anything for it - he does it for no extra charge, he says it takes about 2 minutes work for him. Seems ludicrous that other people might not do it at all because they can 'only' charge £50 +vat.

Hope your solicitor is one of the nice ones, OP!

thomas8232

Hi,

Looking on this website. I can't see if ours is registered or a link to search for them.

Rich2808

That site is for them to register on.

You wont find a list of registered solicitors there. You need to ask your solicitor if they are as only they can tell you

If they aren't come back here and we can assist - usually solicitors registered as help to buy or shared ownership conveyancers on the governments website will offer the HTB isa service.

thomas8232

Cheers,

Our conveyancer was £200 cheaper than the 4 other quotes we received, I wonder if this is the reason.

Thanks,

Suffolksteve1

We went through this process with Halifax last month with two seperate accounts, it was pretty straight forward and easy, after Asking in branch we got the accounts closed with the balance transferred to our reward account immediately with a couple of closure letters - one for our records and one for the solicitor. The solicitor knocked up a first home buyers declaration each that required a signature and the money was paid prior to exchange, the process took around two-three weeks but certainly didn't hold anything up, we were charged £50 each for it.

RosaBernicia

I haven't completed this process yet, but both the quotes I got itemised it as a specific charge of around £60.