Help to Buy Isa scheme branded a ‘scandal’ by financial experts over home deposit flaw

Last Updated: August 20, 2016By
'Scandal': Financial experts have slated the scheme [Image: Yui Mok/PA].

‘Scandal’: Financial experts have slated the scheme [Image: Yui Mok/PA].

Who could possibly have foreseen that any government ‘help to buy’ scheme was a rip-off?

Oh yes, that’s right – This Blog did.

Admittedly it was three years ago, with the current scheme’s forerunner – but I was right, wasn’t I?

The Government’s Help to Buy ISAs have been branded a “scandal” after experts warned up to 500,000 first time buyers could be left with an unexpected hole in their finances.

When former chancellor George Osborne launched the scheme last year, he said it would provide “direct government support to anyone saving for the deposit on their first home.”

However the Daily Telegraph reported warnings from financial experts that more than 500,000 unsuspecting savers cannot use a 25 per cent Government “bonus” towards the deposit.

The Treasury said it had always been clear that the bonus was only payable on completion of the house purchase and was designed solely to reduce the size of a buyer’s mortgage by boosting the amount of equity they could put in.

However Andrew Boast of SAM Conveyancing told the paper that the condition undermined the declared purpose of the scheme.

He said: “It is a scandal. The Government launched this scheme declaredly to help people save the large exchange deposit required to buy a home.

“But what unsuspecting first-time buyers are now horrified to discover is that under the scheme rules they cannot use the bonus as part of this deposit.”

Source: George Osborne’s Help to Buy Isa scheme branded a ‘scandal’ by financial experts over home deposit flaw | Politics | News | London Evening Standard

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3 Comments

  1. autismandate August 20, 2016 at 1:50 pm - Reply

    Euphemistically labelled as a “financial product”

  2. Brian August 20, 2016 at 2:46 pm - Reply

    Failure on top of failure, but by design. Every so called incentive encouraging prudence is a con. The workplace pensions is the next one. The double whammy of contributions is itself unfair, and it will transpire as criminal when this too yields no benefit to those that pay it. Meanwhile, until the perpe-traitors make for the hills, these schemes will be excused, as ‘conditions caused by the decisions of the voters’.

  3. Dez August 20, 2016 at 4:41 pm - Reply

    This is totally out of order !! Once again the Government is muscling into the Banks financial products territory. The banks have the rights to lying, creating bad and false products to cheat and con the public. Just because the Government (sorry taxpayers) own a few dodgy banks does not mean they also now have the right to follow the banks in cheating the population with dumb products. Another
    of Osbornes useless ideas….thank god he has gone.

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