The Santander Help to Buy ISA closes on 28 November – open one now to earn thousands

last updated 27 June 2022

The countdown is on for your last opportunity to open a Help to Buy ISA. The official deadline is at the end of this month. However, if you are hoping to open a Santander Help to Buy ISA you better get a move on.

Santander has announced that the Santander Help to Buy ISA will be closing on 28 November, two days before the official deadline on the 30th November.

Help to Buy ISAs launched in 2015 as a Government scheme helping first-time buyers to clamber onto the property ladder. However, this year it was announced that they would be phased out in favour of the Lifetime ISA.

Santander Help to Buy ISA

Potential first-time buyers have been given until 30 November 2019 to open a Help to Buy ISA. But, the scheme will still continue to keep paying out bonuses until 1 December 2030.

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While most high-street banks – including Barclays, Nationwide and NatWest – will be continuing to offer the Help to Buy ISA until the end of the month. Santander says all Help to Buy ISA applications will need to have been completed and confirmation received, on or before 28 November.

The Santander Help to Buy ISA will pay 2.25 per cent AER if you have a Santander 123 account or you are a Santander Select customer. However, if you aren't Santander will pay 1.75 per cent AER.

'To ensure that we are able to effectively meet the needs of our customers, we will be accepting applications for the Santander Help to Buy ISA completed by Thursday 28 November,' says a Santander spokesperson.

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Our favourite money saving expert Martin Lewis has insisted that anyone over the age of 16 thinking about buying a home should open a Help to Buy ISA while they still can.

'If you may one day want to buy a home, consider opening one now with £1+, as then you can keep saving in it until 2029,' Martin Lewis explains on MoneySavingExpert.com. ‘First-time buyers saving in Help to Buy ISAs get a 25 per cent boost from the state, so each £1,000 saved becomes £1,250.'

If you are a Santander customer and hoping to open a Help to Buy ISA, you better get your skates on. You have just over a week left!

Rebecca Knight has been the Deputy Editor on the Ideal Home Website since 2022. She graduated with a Masters degree in magazine journalism from City, University of London in 2018, before starting her journalism career as a staff writer on women's weekly magazines. She fell into the world of homes and interiors after joining the Ideal Home website team in 2019 as a Digital Writer. In 2020 she moved into position of Homes News Editor working across Homes & Gardens, LivingEtc, Real Homes, Gardeningetc and Ideal Home covering everything from the latest viral cleaning hack to the next big interior trend.