Help!!! Help to buy ISA bonus claim

Queenie_Pang

Hi everyone,

My husband and I have saved more than 10k in Help to buy isa, we closed the account on 1st of September 2018, to purchased a new build flat off plan, the flat hopefully will complete by spring/summer 2020. Recently we received the phone call from our solicitor saying that we are not able to get our government bonus on our HTB isa due to the complete time is too late.

As far as I know we have one year time to claim the bonus from government. But I couldn’t find any information about after the claim, how long we have to use the bonus? I tried to call several place but no one can really answer, even the help to buy agent, they only can read to you what’s wrote on their website.

The solicitor did suggested us to borrow money from family to reopen our HTB isa. But I spoke to bank - Halifax and Nationwide both couldn’t reopen our account, as they need a failed purchasing proof which we don’t have, as we did bought our first home. This make me even less trust our solicitor as she seems don’t know anything about HTB isa. We have so many issues with our solicitor during the exchange contract. She charged us for claim HTB isa bonus, and now after 10 months turn around to say that nearly 3k bonus are flying away.

Is there anyone have successfully got your HTB isa bonus? Could you please share your time frame with me? Or anyone know what should we do to keep our bonus?

Many thanks in advance🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

masonic

You are correct that you have 12 months to claim the bonus after closing your account. See https://www.helptobuy.gov.uk/help-to-buy-isa/faq/#199b24ea-e1f7-648f-8ce9-ff0000ad17aa

So you have until 1st September 2019 to apply for the bonus. To apply for the bonus, you must have an agreed completion date within 3 months, if completion is not due to take place within 3 months of receiving the bonus money, it must be returned.

Your only option now is to get your solicitor to provide you with a purchase failure notification so that you can re-open the HTB ISA and close it again nearer to completion - presuming you have the funds to pay into it. However, I do think your solicitor has a complaint to answer if she led you to believe she could claim the bonus knowing you weren't anywhere near completion.

Queenie_Pang

Hi Masonic, thank you so much for your reply.
As we used the saving for our exchange deposit, that’s why we have to close HTB isa that early.

For now we heard from the developer, if nothing go wrong, we are likely to move in on April 2020, so it should leading us to apply mortgage on October/ November 2019 ( we been told we will need to find mortgage at 6 months before the completion) . Is this mean we are still okay to get the bonus? If we apply the bonus at the last day.

masonic

Queenie_Pang wrote: »

For now we heard from the developer, if nothing go wrong, we are likely to move in on April 2020, so it should leading us to apply mortgage on October/ November 2019 ( we been told we will need to find mortgage at 6 months before the completion) . Is this mean we are still okay to get the bonus? If we apply the bonus at the last day.

The last possible day for you to apply for the bonus is 1st September 2019. On that date, you must be able to complete within about 3 months. Bonus claims are typically processed within 14 days, so if you can't complete by around 15th December 2019 I don't think there is any chance of you getting the bonus without going via the purchase failure notification - reopen HTB ISA route.

It's unfortunate that you've exchanged contracts so far in advance of completion, but your solicitor should have realised this would cause problems when trying to claim the bonus.

Queenie_Pang

Thanks Masonic,

Sorry if I’m asking something stupid, how does the bonus pay in completion work? As I thought the bonus can go toward our mortgage, we can used the bonus on our mortgage deposit.

So now we have paid 5% on the exchange contract, I believe we will have another 5% when we need to look for a mortgage, so I thought we only need to find a mortgage for the (90%-bonus) do you get what I mean? Could you kindly explain how it really work if we can get a bonus?

masonic

Yes, the bonus must end up in the hands of the seller of the property. At completion your solicitor will combine the money provided by you (including the bonus) and the mortgage provider to make the purchase.

If you are taking out a 90% LTV mortgage then that means you need to contribute 10% in total: 5% will come from the deposit you paid at exchange, the other 5% will come from the bonus and other money you have saved. If your bonus will amount to nearly £3k, then that is money you won't have to put into the purchase and it can be used on the many other expenses associated with moving into your new home. Or it can be used to get a smaller mortgage.

It is therefore well worth your while not to lose the ability to claim the bonus. You have until the end of August to come up with enough money to reopen your HTB ISA with the ~£10k you had when it closed. This money is only needed for a few days as you can close the HTB ISA again and reset the 12 month clock, giving you plenty of time to complete.

Queenie_Pang

Hi Masonic,

Thank you so much for your kind explanation. We have been contacted our solicitor trying to get failure letters, but today we get a email from her assistant:
“We have encountered an issue with the purchase failure notice. N***** cannot sign the declarations as she did not submit a payment request on your behalf. We have spoken to help to buy to seek for any resolutions but it has been suggested that you seek support directly from the bank. The purchase we are acting has not been given a completion date yet, you will need to ask the bank for a renewal of your ISA account.”

She has thrown the problems back to us again. The bank said they couldn’t reopen the account without the failure letters. I don’t know where can we ask for anymore help. Our solicitor should tell us all this before we close the account, we are very unhappy about this, not sure what we can do, she should pay our lost.

masonic

Queenie_Pang wrote: »

She has thrown the problems back to us again. The bank said they couldn’t reopen the account without the failure letters. I don’t know where can we ask for anymore help. Our solicitor should tell us all this before we close the account, we are very unhappy about this, not sure what we can do, she should pay our lost.

If you believe your solicitor gave you false information that was the cause of you closing your HTB ISA far too early, then make a formal complaint about this issue, pointing out why the solicitor is liable for the losses from your failure to be able to claim the bonus. If you don't get the matter resolved in 8 weeks, you can take the complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.

Hopefully you have some written communication from the solicitor instructing you to close your HTB ISA or requesting the closure letter that you can use as evidence that you only closed the HTB ISA because your solicitor said that you should.

Your complaint isn't likely to be successful if it was your decision to close the HTB ISA based on your own misunderstanding of when this should be done, and you did not talk to your solicitor about when you should close it.

Queenie_Pang

Thank you Masonic.

I don’t really have that much proofs ��
We actually reserve the plot on August, so we did discussed with her is it possible we could close the account on September to get slightly more bonus. At the time we were worry how long the bank need to provide the closing statements. I did have the email that we told her we have checked with the bank, asked her if that’s okay we close on 1st of September and give her the closing statement 7days later, she replied that’s find as the exchange contract deadline is 3rd of September.

If we have misunderstood, did she have responsibility to point it out? We thought she would understand HTB ISA more than us. But it seems we both side don’t really know how it work.

masonic

Queenie_Pang wrote: »

Thank you Masonic.

I don’t really have that much proofs ��
We actually reserve the plot on August, so we did discussed with her is it possible we could close the account on September to get slightly more bonus. At the time we were worry how long the bank need to provide the closing statements. I did have the email that we told her we have checked with the bank, asked her if that’s okay we close on 1st of September and give her the closing statement 7days later, she replied that’s find as the exchange contract deadline is 3rd of September.

If we have misunderstood, did she have responsibility to point it out? We thought she would understand HTB ISA more than us. But it seems we both side don’t really know how it work.

If you asked her for her advice on your plan to close on 1st September and she said it was fine to do so, then that could be enough.

That email, depending on the exact wording, could be taken as evidence that she did not understand how the scheme worked, because presumably all parties knew that after exchange in September it would be more than a year before the purchase would be completed - and it is only the date of completion that matters when applying for the bonus.

I'm presuming completion wasn't scheduled for soon after exchange, then some circumstances unforeseen to you and the solicitor caused a major delay that pushed completion back by a year or more. If that was the case, then the solicitor would have put in a bonus claim back in September.

danielhopps

Hi,

I was wondering if someone could help me please?

myself and my partner are currently in the process of buying our first home together and we want to know exactly where the bonus goes from both our help to buy isa accounts?

me and my partner have got separate help to buy isa accounts with £7000 in them each, so from calculations we should receive a combined of £3500 roughly. we just want to know exactly where this money goes because we've been told we get all that money back after completion to spend on what ever we won't but our solicitor is saying we won't receive any money back and that's put towards 'completion monies'?

we haven't exchange contracts or anything yet, but we've got £14000 deposit for the house we wish to use for the mortgage, our house is valued at £205995, we've had to use the help to buy scheme of 20%, so taking that away with our deposit we've got a mortgage of £150796, we've budgeted to pay the solicitor fees off ourselves and any other fees will be paid by ourself as well from savings etc.

im not very impressed with our solicitor at the minute as we felt they have been useless and very reluctant to help us. we just want to know what's going to happen to this potential £3500 bonus we've managed to save up?

kind regards

Daniel