What happens to a Help to Buy ISA now?

Can you still open a Help to Buy ISA?

No. The scheme closed to new accounts on 30 November 2019. If you opened one before that date, your account is still valid and you can carry on using it under the rules below. If you never opened one, this specific product is no longer available, though the Lifetime ISA offers a comparable first-home bonus and remains open to new savers under 40.

How the bonus actually works

The bonus is 25% of what you have saved, capped at £3,000, which means you need £12,000 saved to get the maximum. It is paid when you complete on your first home, and your solicitor or conveyancer applies for it directly rather than you claiming it yourself. The property has to cost no more than £250,000, or £450,000 in London, has to be the only home you own, and has to be where you intend to live. You do not have to repay the bonus.

Who was eligible when the scheme was open

While it accepted new accounts, a Help to Buy ISA was open to UK residents aged 16 or over who were buying their first home, with one account allowed per person rather than per household. That is why some couples buying together each opened their own account: two first-time buyers purchasing together could each earn the bonus on their own savings, within the combined limits for the property. None of this changes what you can do with an account you already hold. It matters only if you are trying to make sense of older references to the scheme’s original rules, since gov.uk’s current guidance is written for existing account holders rather than for the eligibility criteria that applied while the scheme was still open.

Until when can you save, and until when can you claim?

Gov.uk’s live consumer guidance states these dates to the month: you can pay into the account until November 2029, and claim the 25% bonus until November 2030. A separate gov.uk page, the annual savings statistics methodology, gives the same deadlines to the day: 30 November 2029 to keep paying in, and 1 December 2030 to claim the bonus. Both are gov.uk sources; the statistics page simply states the same cut-offs more precisely, so this page uses the day-level dates.

Can you have both a Help to Buy ISA and a Lifetime ISA?

Yes. Gov.uk is direct on this point: if you have a Help to Buy ISA as well as a Lifetime ISA, you can only use the government bonus from one of them to buy your first home. Holding both is fine. Getting two bonuses on the same purchase is not.

You can move money in one direction without a penalty: a transfer from a Help to Buy ISA into a Lifetime ISA is allowed. Moving money the other way, out of a Lifetime ISA and into a Help to Buy ISA, is treated as an unauthorised Lifetime ISA withdrawal and triggers the 25% Lifetime ISA withdrawal charge, because you are taking the money out of the Lifetime ISA wrapper rather than genuinely transferring it within one.

Should you transfer to a Lifetime ISA instead?

This depends on your own plans, not on which product is generally “better.” A few concrete differences worth weighing:

If you are years away from buying and would otherwise save more than £200 a month toward a home, a Lifetime ISA lets you contribute more and get a bigger potential bonus each year, subject to its own £4,000 annual limit and the fact that it counts toward your overall £20,000 ISA allowance. If you are close to buying and your Help to Buy ISA already covers what you need, switching adds complexity without an obvious benefit. Read our Lifetime ISA guide for the full rules before deciding either way.

What happens if you do not buy a home?

Your money is not at risk and is not lost. It stays in the ISA, keeps earning interest tax-free, and you can carry on saving into it up to the scheme’s deadlines above, or simply withdraw it like any other Cash ISA without the bonus attached.

There is one specific situation gov.uk’s guidance for ISA managers addresses directly: if you already withdrew your funds and closed the account in order to claim the bonus, and the house purchase then fell through, you may be able to make a reinstatement subscription. This lets you put back up to the amount you withdrew, within 12 months of the closure date or your final withdrawal, into a Cash ISA, or into a current tax year’s Stocks and Shares ISA, Innovative Finance ISA or Lifetime ISA. Your ISA manager is not obliged to accept a reinstatement subscription, so check with them directly if this applies to you.

Tax treatment depends on your circumstances and may change.