COVID-19 delaying house beyond HTB deadline

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Hope everyone is safe and well in these current times. 

My partner and I reserved a new build property in early January and exchanged contracts in February. 

We are first time buyers and therefore using the Help to buy scheme equity loan covering 20% of the purchase price & we’ve put down a 5% deposit, with the mortgage covering the remaining 75%. 

The house was originally due to complete in November but the site was closed for 9 weeks due to covid-19. This week we were given the new completion month which is estimated to be April 2021 (5 month delay). 

The help to buy scheme changes on 1st April 2021 meaning we are no longer eligible to buy our property using the scheme after the cut off date of 31st March. Obviously we didn’t think we would be in this position as no one really knew how much covid would affect the world, otherwise we would have held off, but hindsight is 20/20 right! 

The first thing we did was contact our mortgage advisor to see if they could get an extension on the scheme as it was already approved, however this is not possible at this stage. 

We then contacted our solicitor but they are currently furloughed so we have been passed to another solicitor at a different branch, who is not able to access our files due to our current solicitor being furloughed. They have contacted the house builder’s solicitor to see whether the terms of the contract allow for a variation of 2 or 6 months on the build; if it’s 2 we are told we are in a good position to pull out, but if it’s 6 we are told there is little we can do in terms of pulling out of the sale. 

I’m really panicking and I’m sure we’re not the only people in this position - but the 20% is a large sum of money that we won’t just be able to come up with, our families aren’t in a position to help, and I think we would be JUST out of affordability to get a mortgage on the full property price, also I’m aware we would be then putting down a 10% deposit. 

I don’t know whether to wait a couple of months to see if the government extend the deadline of the current help to buy scheme (the solicitor, our mortgage advisor and the sales team for the house builder seem to think this is what will happen but I can’t just rely on this of course), or if I really have any other option. 

My question is really does anyone have any advice? Anyone in the same position or know someone who is, if so what are you/they doing? 

Just to clarify our mortgage advisor is one we paid for ourselves and has nothing to do with the builder. Same for the solicitor. 

Thanks in advance.