Help to buy isa turn around

DanJKelly

HI All

MERRY DECEMBER

just wondered if any of you have experience with Help to Buy ISAs, we are in the process of house buying and are hoping to exchange in the new year. Just wondered what the process time is from closing down the ISA to getting the bonus,,, when do we need to close this down etc? We are thinking to leave it till Jan so we can get Jans bonus however we dont want it to take forever to process and this be the thing holding us back!

Another question,, our solicitor mentioned having 10% of the sale for the exchange date however the bonus makes up some of the 10% so we dont want to transfer the whole 10% how does this work?

BritishBibliophile

We closed ours down in the middle of November when it became clear that we would be exchanging before Christmas.

Handed the letters in to the solicitor, they then had to upload the information (plus our National Insurance numbers) on the Help to Buy ISA portal, which didn't work first time round. Second attempt did work - I believe our solicitor completed the process on the Wednesday and the money arrived on the Monday, I read 5 working days as being the target time online so we were within that.

Give them the paperwork in good time, or at the very least warn them that you'll need this to be done and check they've been through the process before. Ours hadn't and was a bit reluctant to sort it, but got it done fairly quickly in the end.

DanJKelly

brilliant thankyou, our solicitor does know we are using this but seems a little edgy when we ask questions so im not sure shes actually processed it before. We asked about the bonus making our money up to 10% and she seemed to think we should still transfer 10% and then somehow we will be refunded once we get the bonus.. However this seems a little dodgy to me and I dont want to end up losing £2000 from our funds to decorate the house if they dont end up refunding us!

vapourA

Our solicitor told us that the ISA bonus cannot be used for the deposit at exchange, only completion. We had to stump up the full deposit without it. So the bonus has been offset against our legal fees. She said it takes 5 days once she had the account closure statement which itself took a few days to arrive from the bank after closing the account. So my advice would be close it at least two weeks before you think you will need the bonus to be available.

gycraig_2

Read it can't really be used for the original deposit as can't be taken out till completion, destroying the whole point of if

G_M

10% of the sale price (or some other amount that you negotiate with the sellers) must be paid on Exchang of Contracts.

The ISA only becomes payable on Completion.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34910583

SparksAlive

If you've got the money 'for decorating' to make up the rest of your deposit then use that. You can just put the money back in when you get it back at completion.


When my sister completed, her solicitor took the Help to Buy ISA money off her bill from them, so she only had a small amount to pay them. This might be what yours does as well, I assume it makes more sense than them paying you the money, then also invoicing you.

DanJKelly

great thankyou everyone for your replies!!