The government has introduced some great measures to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder. This Help to Buy scheme has been extended passed the original deadline to 31 December 2021 so important to First time buyers to get on top of this in 2021.
Under the Help to Buy Scheme you can claim relief on the lesser of:
· €30,000
· 10% of the purchase price of the property
· 10% of the completion value of a self-build
· The amount of income tax and DIRT you paid for the previous 4 years.
The process is pretty simple:
Step One: Application
If you pay tax through PAYE, then you need to visit Revenue’s myAccount service.
For self-assessed taxpayers, you’ll need to go through the Revenue Online System.
Step Two: Claim
Once you have the signed contract for your home, you can log in to myAccount or Revenue Online System and upload evidence of your purchase and input details of the sale.
There are a few caveats to be aware of:
· The property must be a part of a new development (or a self-build).
· You must double check with the estate agent that the developer has registered the development with the help to buy (most large developers have but it’s worth checking)
· You can only avail of the help to buy scheme if you are borrowing MORE than 70% of the price of the house. To give you an example of how this works; if the house is worth €300k and you have savings of €70k to put towards it and HTB support of €30k, this would be a total deposit of €100k. For this property this would mean a loan to value of 66% which is below the 70% so you could not avail of the HTB scheme. However, you could choose only to use a portion of your savings, so your deposit could €30k from Help to buy and €60k savings (total €90k) so your LTV would be 70% and this is allowed.
Check out these websites for more detailed information:
Revenue.ie_HTB and Citizensinformation.ie_HTB
Register at Switcheroo.ie for a free consultation on your mortgage requirements.
Alison Fearon is Managing Director of Switcheroo.ie
Panda capital Limited T/A Switcheroo is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
