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If you are interested in a Help to Buy Scheme, you can check your eligibility with Lending Expert today and get one step closer to having your dream home. Use our calculator and table provided and simply click on ‘Get a Quote’ to start the process. Enter some basic details in less than 5 minutes and our team will come back to you with a personalised quote.
The government’s Help to Buy Equity Loan is a scheme that enables you to get an equity loan towards the cost of buying a new-build home as a first-time buyer.
You pay a minimum deposit of 5% of the property purchase price, and arrange a repayment mortgage of at least 25% of the property purchase price. You can then borrow an equity loan to cover between 5% and 20% of the property purchase price of the new-build property – in London, this rises to 40%.
The equity loan percentage that you borrow is then used to calculate your interest and equity loan repayments.
In order to get a Help to Buy mortgage, there’s some criteria that you must meet, and some that your property must also meet.
You Need To:
The Property Must Be:
You can longer apply for a Help to Buy ISA. If you have already set one up, you can pay in up to £200 per month, until November 2029. When you come to buy your first home, the government will top up your savings by 25%, up to £3,000.
If you are buying with someone who also has a Help to Buy ISA, you will both receive the bonus. You can claim the bonus until November 2030.
As an example, if you have saved £12,000 in your Help to Buy ISA and so has the person you intend to buy with, you will both receive the maximum bonus of £3,000 from the government. This would bring your combined savings up from £24,000 to £30,000.
Yes, you can remortgage your Help to Buy home. There’s different processes and criteria for remortgaging your Help to Buy home depending on if you want to borrow more money or not.
If you want to remortgage your Help to Buy home without borrowing more money, you need to contact the government Help to Buy scheme. You’ll then have to get all your paperwork ready to send to them alongside your application form. Once you’ve then paid your administration fee, you just need to wait for a decision.
To remortgage your Help to Buy home and also borrow more money, you’ll need to check your eligibility, get a redemption statement, check your new lender is qualified, ask for a breakdown of their services, find a conveyancing solicitor, and pay any arrears.
Yes, you can add, replace, or remove a homeowner from your equity loan contract for your Help to Buy home. You should always consider how these changes may affect you individually, so we recommend speaking to our team of experts first!
Add a Homeowner:
In order to add a new homeowner, they must also be eligible for a Help to Buy Equity Loan. This means that they must be a first-time homebuyer, never have owned a home or land in the UK or abroad, and never have had any form of Sharia mortgage. They will need to complete an eligibility check before they can be added as a homeowner.
Replace a Homeowner:
In order to replace a homeowner on the equity loan contract, you’ll need to add a homeowner and remove a homeowner in one application. You’ll add the person you’d like to become a homeowner, and remove the person you no longer want to be a homeowner.
Remove a Homeowner:
One of the homeowners on the original equity loan must stay the same until the equity loan has been repaid in full. The homeowners named on the equity loan need to be the same as those on the repayment mortgage.
Usually, you can change a homeowner on the equity loan twice during its lifetime. All homeowners on the contract will still need to show that they can afford it. If you’re increasing the length of your repayment mortgage alongside changing names, the equity loan term may be changed to match the term of the repayment mortgage.
You will need a variety of information, permission and documents for a change of ownership. This can include the following, categorised by the original homeowner, the new homeowner and both…
The Original Homeowner:
The New Homeowner:
Both Homeowners:
See the government’s ‘how to change ownership of your Help to Buy home’ for more useful information.
The gap between salaries and house prices may have stopped growing quite so rapidly, but it still leaves the gap just too large for many people to even begin to contemplate getting onto the property ladder. Trying to save up a 20% deposit whilst paying rental prices that can be a couple of hundred pounds more than you would be paying on a mortgage can be incredibly frustrating as you are essentially throwing away money that you could be investing in a property of your own.
Fortunately for first time buyers the government has recognised that this is an issue and has put together the Help to Buy scheme that is specifically designed to help people who do not have a large deposit to get onto the property ladder. The Help to Buy Scheme has two components to it. The first is the Help to Buy Mortgage Guarantee and the second is the Help to Buy Equity Loan.
The qualification criteria are easy to find on the internet, but the key elements you must meet are as follows: you must have a deposit of at least 5% of the property value that you wish to purchase; the property you are looking to buy must have a value of £600,000 or less; and finally you must be purchasing the property as your main residence so you cannot use this scheme for a buy to let property, or to buy a property as a second home.
The great thing about the Help to Buy Mortgage is that most of the big mortgage lenders in the UK have signed up to be part of the scheme, so you should have a reasonable choice of mortgages available to you. The way these types of mortgage work is that the government actually acts as a guarantor for you on any borrowing over 80%. This means that you are able to get a mortgage with as little as a 5% deposit because should you default on your payments, the government guarantees to pay the lender the % over 80% of your loan.
You will be glad to know that this will only ever come into play if you get into difficulties with your mortgage and if you make all of your payments on time then you will see none of this and can just approach your mortgage repayments in the same way as any other mortgage. Therefore you will be responsible for the repayment of the whole loan over the term of the mortgage. The major benefit of this scheme is that in a risk averse financial climate, lenders are provided with a lower risk option due to the government guarantee for any borrowing over 80% of the property price.
The Help to Buy equity loan scheme is slightly different to the mortgage scheme as you will be provided with an equity loan to boost your deposit to 25% in order to then secure a standard mortgage. The criteria to qualify for an equity loan are slightly different to than for a Help to Buy mortgage. In addition to the qualification criteria already mentioned, in order to qualify for an equity loan you also have to buying a new build property. The process is then that you provide a deposit of at least 5%, which is then topped up with a government equity loan of 20% of the price of the property, which then leaves you with a minimum of a 25% deposit to then be able to apply for a standard mortgage on the remaining 75% of the property.
You do have to be careful with an equity loan due to the interest rates that are charged on the loan. You get five years of having the loan interest free, but from the sixth year you then have to start paying interest. It is very important that you understand that the interest rate will increase every year, and so will the size of the equity loan, so this is really only a cost-effective option for people who can use the loan to reduce mortgage payments enough by getting a good interest rate on the mortgage to then save up enough to be able to pay off the loan and switch the entirety of the borrowing to a mortgage. While the interest addition to the loan may be reasonable for a couple of years, you will find that it will grow increasingly quickly and could be very substantial after 25 years, which is when it will need to be repaid in full.
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