Help to Buy Isa - £250k Limit

Laurenmcsporen

Hi!

Me and my boyfriend have found our perfect house. We are both first time buyers and have been paying into our help to buy ISA.

The house is on for £260k and we are outside of London. The current rules state we can only go upto £250k to claim our bonus from the government on the ISA.

We could technically get a mortgage for more however this would mean loosing the bonus we would recieve (currently around £3k).

Is anyone aware of any rules to get around this? We have offered £250k but it hasn't been accepted and i think the buyer won't budge.

I've been looking into maybe offering fixtures and fittings for the house, i did ask about what could be left and included in the sale and there is a reasonable amount (so cooker appliances etc). We could potentially club together or borrow from our parents too pay this.

The other option but i can't see anything online about it, is offering to pay there estate agent fee's. Is this legally ok to do so?

If anyone has any ideas or advice it would be muchly appreciated!

Pixie5740

This sounds similar to when people tried to keep the purchase price of the property under £250k under the old SDLT regime. I doubt you're going to find a solicitor who is willing to go along with your ruse, in fact why don't you check with your solicitor? I very much doubt you'd be able to justify £10k of fixtures and fittings because second hand goods don't have that much value.

juniordoc

How long has this house been on the market?
Have you seen anything else that you remotely like?

Prices are stagnating so if you leave your 250 offer on the table, the vendors may come to accept your offer if they get no higher offers.
If you really like the house and there isn't much else out there, then it may be worth cutting your losses and losing the bonus, but you could leave it a week or 2 to see if the sellers re-consider your offer.
If you could get them to 255 then maybe you could justify 5k for fixtures and fittings but not 10!