Help To Buy Question

Kdclee

What is the average time to exchange for a Help To Buy property? We are chain free and obviously buying from a developer so no hold ups chain-wise. But just occurred to me there may be extra paperwork and hold ups with the government-organised part?

katkatmachine

Depends on so many factors. In our case, we exchanged two and a half months after reserving an off plan. Got delayed because when we first submitted our HTB application our developer hasn’t received funding yet so we couldn’t apply yet Until our developer sorted it out. We waited a week, after that developer called us that it was okay to apply so we did. But after three days, heard from HTB that our address in the reservation form and PIF do not match. So had to call developer again to fix address in reservation form. Seriously you have to make sure everything matches in the two forms otherwise they will just send it back to you several times. They are so iffy about It, even if you’re form is just missing a number or a street name in the address it will get rejected. For the application alone it already took us three weeks! But if everything was fine from the beginning, ideally, you will get the Agreement to Proceed in just 4 days.

So we got the ATP, then it was time for our solicitor to do their part. But again when they submitted the forms so they can get the Authority to Exchange there was some issue again with the application form so my solicitor had to resubmit the application and some documents. Every small mistake in the form amounts to 1-2 weeks delay. Exasperating!

But yeah, after all the brouhaha we were able to exchange after two months! Finally!

Kdclee

Thanks for the info.
I realise I have no idea about actually applying for HTB. I assumed our mortgage broker would do all that paperwork as it was her suggestion to go for this type of loan? Should I confirm that with her?

katkatmachine

I think it does not matter who applies for the HTB, you can apply or your broker can apply for you. The PRoperty information form is easy to fill in with all your details, you can download it in HTB website. It’s just that when we first applied we did not know that everything should match against the reservation form so we had to resubmit the form three times. Lol.

Before applying for HTB assess first if you really need it, i think that’s the most important part. You have to remember that if you loan, say 10% of the price of the house your buying, it does not mean you pay the same amount. You actually have to pay 10% of the value of the property at the time you’re going to pay it. So Say the price of house is £100k and its value increased to £110k by the time your paying it, have to pay now £11k plus admin fees.

Personally If we could afford to get a higher mortgage we wouldn’t get HTB. Oh well...that’s life. Lol.

katkatmachine

I did not answer the question. Lol. Yes, ask your broker who’s going to apply. In our case we asked our broker and he said it’s us. We were actually !!!!ed when he said that because we thought it’s part of their service. Lol.

But ended up applying ourselves. Fairly easy to fill in the form to be fair, it just we weren’t careful enough and there were so many mistakes in the reservation form that the sales agent gave us. Lol.

All in all, it’s better if you apply for it yourself so you know what’s going on rather than just wait for your broker to update you.

bucksbloke

Took us six weeks!

pablakeman

HTB - get your broker to do it for free - would be weird if they tried to charge as many do it for free. You will still need to sign it though, so when they are doing it, make sure you are near a printer and a scanner so you can get it back to them quickly for actual submission (Annd direct debit mandate for the £1 month admin charge from HTB)

Ours came back in 4 working days after submitted, and it appears they sent the forms also to solicitors and developers (but I emailed to developers too just in case)

Tomg84

We were FTB HTB and a broker. We managed to exchange in 10 days on a new build house. The broker did all the leg work for us in terms of form filling. Our broker was free and didn't charge for HTB or anything