Help to buy ISA fees

LPointer4

I am a first time buyer and have just had the bill from the solicitors and we are being charged £120 (£60 per account) for our help to buy ISA. We closed the accounts when asked and sent the closing statements to solicitors who sent off for the bonus monies but haven’t received yet. Is it normal to be charged for this? We have not had the best buying experience with solicitors with delays, not being sent paperwork and swapping team without telling us, so we are not sure what we should be expecting as nothing surprises us now! 

eskbanker

Yes, this is normal, they're allowed to charge up to £50 plus VAT, i.e. £60, for applying for the bonus on your behalf:

https://www.helptobuy.gov.uk/help-to-buy-isa/faq/#70a424ea-e1f7-648f-8ce9-ff0000ad17aa

How much will my solicitor or conveyancer charge me to process my government bonus application?

Your solicitor or conveyancer cannot charge more than £50 + VAT to process your bonus application

Margaret_Dakers

Hi, I should like to comment about my experience with Help to Buy ISA and asking Barclay for the closing statement so that I could send it to my solicitor to claim my government bonus.  I spoke with a female customer services adviser who duly sent me by email a 'closing statement' which looked very like any usual savings account statement but had been told that the closing statement would look like an ordinary savings statement showing my end balance.  I requested this well in advance middle of January 2021 as completion was expected for 15 February 2021, as professional services are working from home and everything as a result is taking longer I tried to keep calm but then my lawyer was ready to accept my savings plus help to buy bonus to put with my mortgage with Barclays and bring together to pay for my house purchase.  I advised lawyer that I did not have any funds paid into my current account yet by Barclay for my Help to Buy, I don't think the lawyer had ever seen a closing statement before as he had accepted the copy of the savings certificate as the closing statement, Monday 15 February as bypassed and had I not gone to the Barclays Bank in George Street, Edinburgh and received the help from the bank counter assistant, who incidentally could not contact the ISA team while I was in the Branch, the ISA Help to Buy savings would not have been in my current account and account closed.  I am now waiting on my lawyer/solicitor to claim the ISA bonus on my savings and by end of week I should have gone to completion.  Barclay ISA team have let me down, the first person not having taken any notes on the computer so the ISA team could process my request for the closing statement, and let me to believe the statement sent was the closing statement.  I wasted all the time from middle of January thinking and trusting the Barclay customer services to be doing their job properly, everyone can make a mistake when learning but fully qualified ISA Help to Buy personnel should be available because there is such a fine line between carrying this process out and the wrong way to do it, there are instructions but very difficult to understand and no example of what a closing statement should look like, any examples found online are blurred and no help.  I have to tread carefully because I have my first time buyer mortgage with Barclay but I saved hard to come to the point of claiming for the ISA bonus and adding it to my savings, every penny counting towards my house purchase, all horribly delayed and could prove expensive if completion is not met on time.