Feb 25th 2025, LONDON –

More than 2 million people are still stuck in the discontinued Help To Buy ISA (H2B) scheme, a Freedom Of Information request made by the comparison site, Finder has revealed.

The H2B ISA was launched in December 2015 to help first-time buyers and had a property price cap of £250,000. However, despite the average UK house price rising 42% in the 9 years since it launched, from £189,000 to £268,000, the cap has never changed.

This has resulted in more than half (54%) of local authorities in the UK having average house prices above the £250,000 H2B ISA limit in December 2024, according to the latest reported figures that Finder has analysed. In London, an eye-watering 82% of local authorities have average house prices above the London-specific limit of £450,000 (which is also the Lifetime ISA limit here).

It’s no longer possible to open a Help to Buy ISA and the scheme will be scrapped completely in November 2030, so millions will lose the promised government bonus if they can’t use it by this date. Over 2 million accounts are currently open, holding a total value of £4.859 billion.

Frustratingly for savers, the Lifetime ISA superseded the H2B ISA less than 2 years later in April 2017 and came with a more generous property price cap of £450,000. It also allows you to save £4,000 a year vs £2,400 a year (both with a 25% bonus on top), yet for some reason, those who have saved up in their H2B ISA aren’t allowed to transfer all their money over at once. Instead, the £4,000 annual LISA limit still applies to H2B holders, meaning some people could have spent many wasted years saving for no reason.

Finder has been campaigning for H2B ISA holders to be able to transfer all their savings across into a LISA in one go, including writing letters to MPs, but has yet to receive any comment on how this will be addressed. The government also launched an enquiry into the Lifetime ISA recently, but it made no mention of the Help To Buy ISA.

Sophie Barber, 28, from London, is someone who feels let down by the Help to Buy ISA scheme:

“As house prices went up in the area I was hoping to buy my first property in, I realised the £250,000 price cap would make it almost impossible to purchase a home using my Help to Buy ISA and still get the £3,000 government bonus I was building towards.

“I’m frustrated that saving into the Help to Buy ISA seems to have been a complete waste of time, with no bonus granted for the money I spent 5 years saving. I opened a LISA as an alternative but there was no way for me to quickly build back the pot of money I’d saved. Instead, I was stuck moving across £4,000 per year to the new account at the expense of adding any fresh savings.”

Commenting on the findings, Matt Mckenna, personal finance expert at finder.com said:

“It feels like the Help to Buy ISA has genuinely been forgotten about. We will see what comes out of the Government’s recent consultation on the Lifetime ISA but the fact that the H2B ISA wasn’t even mentioned among the 10 questions they asked says it all.

“It is getting harder than ever for potential homeowners to get on the housing ladder so it’s shocking that there are over 2 million people effectively trapped in a product that isn’t fit for purpose. Allowing them to transfer their hard-earned savings over to the Lifetime ISA in one go would be very simple to do and make a huge difference to people’s lives. This is what Finder is campaigning for – we are encouraging people to get in touch with their MPs using this letter template to bring about the simple change that is needed.”

To download the letter template and see the research in full, visit: https://www.finder.com/uk/savings-accounts/help-to-buy-isa-prisoners

Methodology:

Finder submitted a Freedom Of Information request to HM Treasury and received an answer on 14 February 2025.

Finder used the latest data from the UK House Price Index to find the average house prices broken down by local authority in December 2024 and analysed this to see how many fell above and below the price cap.