Help to Buy ISA

Becca023012

We are planning to get a mortgage in less than a year so have decided a Help To Buy ISAs, we can’t put all our deposit money in there but some is better than none!
The rule is the house has to be under £250,000 in our area.
We are doing shared ownership. The house is £360,000 but our mortgage is £126,000 with a 5% deposit. Does it still count for us as our mortgage is under the £250,000?

Thank you

MallyGirl

HTB is for:
a purchase price of up to £250,000 (or up to £450,000 in London)

Rich2808

MallyGirl wrote: »

HTB is for:
a purchase price of up to £250,000 (or up to £450,000 in London)

Being crystal clear its the total value of the property not the share you own.

If you buy a 50% share of a £300k property outside London you cannot get a help to buy isa bonus - even though you are only buying £150k of property. Seems unfair to me - when someone who can afford to buy a £450k property outright in London does qualify. But those are the rules set by Government.

You could of course use the lifetime isa - if your completion isn't imminent. So I suggest you switch to a lifetime isa - as the limit for that is £450k nationally (unless you are over 40).

WorkingTowardsDebtFree

JBBROWN94 wrote: »

Becca023012 you are probably already aware however in case your not.. you cannot use the money in your help to buy ISA as your deposit. The money and your bonus will only be released at completion stage, so if you have enough money to put in your HTB ISA and your deposit separately then great. If not I!!!8217;d opt for a Lifetime ISA.

This isn't right. The money that someone has deposited in the HTB ISA can be used as the exchange deposit.

The bonus paid by the government, however, can't - that only gets released at completion.

If someone has enough deposit with the HTB + other funds, before the HTB bonus is added, then they are best not switching to a Lifetime ISA if they want a mortgage within the year.

Mortgaging in less than a year means that a Lifetime ISA would not qualify for the bonus at all, and switching from the HTB ISA also means no bonus would be due from it.

lmartin87

The money can be used, but the bonus cannot. Because you close the HTB ISA and withdraw the funds, which you can then pay to the solicitor, and you give them a closing statement showing closing balance which is used by them to claim the balance - which they can only do after exchange.

ashe

JBBROWN94 wrote: »

Martin Lewis must be wrong.....

Point 10 on the MSE guide

The Help to Buy ISA bonus only helps with the mortgage deposit, NOT the exchange deposit

While you can use the money you've saved in a Help to Buy ISA towards this exchange, it's only at completion that you receive the mortgage money and Help to Buy ISA bonus so the bonus won't help towards the home exchange deposit.


Surely thats just as lmartin87 has described...