Help to buy equity loan threshold

elzed08

Hi there,

I'm at the beginning of thinking of buying a house as I didn't think I'd be in a position to afford it for a long time. Having looked into the Help to Buy Equity Loan, this is looking more achievable sooner than expected. I'm looking to buy in Scotland and saw there is a £200k maximum threshold on the property price. There aren't a lot of new builds at the moment under this price. I have seen some apartments at £205k so I wanted to ask if anyone has any experience negotiating down so they can be eligible for this scheme. Perhaps that isn't even possible, but any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Benjyman86

Hi there, so going through the final process at the moment of exchange etc. You absolutely can negotiate prices as you can with any other open market home. The clear element here is the demand vs supply. If they are struggling with demand, they will be more open to discounts. When I initially looked for properties after the lockdown ended I had one developer offer a 10% reduction off of list price. I didn't pursue further and that was their first offer (there's a few developments in close proximity here) but the house layout was not what I wanted. So, you can always go in with the hard stop and explain why. Worse case they say no.