Transfer of Equity / increasing Help to Buy share of equity

sonaldo

My partner and I recently bought a new build flat in London with Help to Buy. The latter have 35% of the equity (i.e. 5% less than the maximum). 
We recently discussed how we might transfer equity to one of us in case we don't stay together, i.e. removing one of our names from the mortgage. 

The problem is, I doubt either of us would pass the lender's affordability checks (as the mortgage is about 7x our individual incomes). 
So, I wondered if the lender would consider a Transfer of Equity provided we could reduce the existing mortgage (through a one-off payment) to an acceptable amount (i.e. 3.5-4.5x our individual incomes)? 
Secondly, is it possible to increase the Help to Buy equity share from 35 to 40%, and use proceeds of that to pay down the mortgage? 
Thanks for any help. 

sonaldo

bump

kingstreet

You can't increase an HTB loan. You can remove a party, you cannot add another.
The lender will accept a TOE if the mortgage balance is reduced to what it considers affordable. If you borrow elsewhere to do this, your mortgage borrowing power will fall, so it's catch 22.