Selling a Help to Buy Home: Repaying the Equity Loan (2026)

By Lisa Hayes · 28 October 2026

Yes, you can sell a home bought with a Help to Buy equity loan, and the loan gets repaid out of the sale proceeds on completion day. What you repay is the loan percentage (usually 20%, or 40% in London) multiplied by the higher of your home's market value or the actual sale price, plus any interest and fees you owe. That "higher of" rule is the bit that catches people out, and it is why a quick, discounted sale can cost a Help to Buy owner far more than it first appears.

I'm Lisa Hayes, and I've watched plenty of Help to Buy owners reach this point with a vague sense that "the government will want some money back". They are right, but the detail decides whether you walk away with a comfortable sum or a nasty surprise at the solicitor's. This guide goes through the lot: the rules, the sums, the paperwork, the timings, and what changes if you want a fast sale to a cash buyer.

What happens to a Help to Buy equity loan when you sell?

Selling is one of four events that force you to repay the loan in full. The others are reaching the end of the loan term (normally 25 years), paying off your repayment mortgage, and breaking the terms and conditions. Of those, selling is the one most owners meet first.

The loan was never a gift or a grant. Homes England lent you a slice of the purchase price, typically 20% (40% in London on the original schemes), and in return took a matching slice of the property's value. It sits on the title as a second charge behind your mortgage. When you sell, the buyer's solicitor needs that charge removed, so it has to be paid off from the proceeds on completion.

Your conveyancer repays your mortgage lender and then Homes England from the sale money. What is left is yours.

• 20% / 40%loan share, 40% in London
• 5 yearsinterest-free period
• 1.75%year 6 interest on the original loan
• 3 monthsshelf life of the RICS valuation

How much do you repay? The "higher of" rule

This is the question that matters, so let me be blunt about it. The repayment is not what you borrowed. It is the same percentage of the property's value today. Gov.uk states that on a sale you pay the equity loan percentage of the market value or the agreed sale price, whichever is higher.

Here is a worked example. The numbers are illustrative, not anyone's real case. You bought for £250,000 with a 5% deposit (£12,500), a 20% equity loan (£50,000) and a mortgage of £187,500. Five-plus years on, a RICS surveyor values the home at £275,000.

So the loan grew by £5,000 because the house grew by £25,000. That is the deal working as designed. It also means the loan is a moving target. Two years of price growth and your repayment is higher than the number on your original paperwork.

What if the sale price is lower than the valuation?

Then you still repay on the valuation. If the surveyor says £275,000 and a buyer agrees £270,000, the equity loan is calculated on £275,000. You do not get to shave the repayment because you accepted a lower offer. The only way the repayment comes down is a lower RICS valuation, and Homes England can reject a report that looks too low (or too high) against similar properties.

What if the home is worth less than you paid?

This part of the scheme is kinder than people expect. If the value falls, your loan falls in proportion. A home bought at £250,000 that is now valued at £225,000 means a repayment of 20% of £225,000, which is £45,000. Homes England takes its share of the loss as well as the gain.

Your mortgage lender does no such thing. Your mortgage balance is still your mortgage balance. That asymmetry is why Help to Buy owners in a falling market can end up short, and I cover the maths further down. If you are already worried about this, read our guide to selling a house in negative equity alongside this one.

What does selling a Help to Buy home actually cost?

The equity loan repayment is the big number, but there are smaller charges stacked around it. Here is the full set you should expect.

One point of detail. You keep paying the management fee, and interest if you are past year 5, until the loan is fully repaid. If you are behind on either, settle the arrears or agree a payment plan with Homes England before the sale. Your solicitor cannot get the "Authority to Complete" until everything owed is repaid or a payment plan is in place.

For the non-Help-to-Buy costs, our breakdown of the true cost of selling a house covers agent fees, legal fees and the rest.

How much will you walk away with?

Let me carry the example through to the end. Keep the assumptions in view: £275,000 valuation, an outstanding mortgage of £178,000 (you've paid some off since 2021), an agent charging 1.2% plus VAT, and a modest legal bill. All illustrative.

Notice what happens if you sell the same house to a buyer who wants a 15% discount for speed. The price drops to £233,750. The repayment, per the rule, is still based on the £275,000 valuation, so it stays at £55,000.

A £41,250 discount has taken £41,250 off your equity. Not a penny of it comes off the loan. For someone with a Help to Buy loan, that is the whole story of why you should think hard before accepting a deep-discount cash offer, and why you should check any quick-sale quote against your valuation number before you say yes. The rest of this guide goes through how to avoid being the person on the wrong end of that.

How do you repay a Help to Buy equity loan when selling? Step by step

Gov.uk sets out the process, and it is more procedural than difficult. The trouble is the lead times. Do things in the wrong order and a sale that should take twelve weeks stalls for three. Here is the sequence.

1. Get a RICS valuation. You choose the surveyor and you pay. They must be RICS qualified and registered (MRICS or FRICS if your loan is from the 2021 to 2023 scheme), independent of any estate agent, and not related to or known to you. They must inspect inside the property and give at least three like-for-like comparable sales from the last 12 months, within two miles, with bespoke market commentary. The report goes on company headed paper, addressed to Homes England, signed and dated, as a non-editable PDF. Bank valuations are not accepted.
2. Send it in fast. Customer Service needs it within 5 working days of the report being issued. It is valid for three months from the date it is produced.
3. Instruct a conveyancing solicitor. You must use one. Give them authority to act and put their details on your application. Ask upfront whether they have dealt with Help to Buy redemptions before. It is a specialist enough process that experience saves days.
4. Complete the repayment application form and send it with the valuation and the Memorandum of Sale from your estate agent.
5. Pay the £200 administration fee plus any arrears. Nothing is progressed until the fee lands. Confirm bank details with Customer Service by phone before you transfer, because scam risk around payment details is real.
6. Receive the redemption letter. It goes to you and your conveyancer and confirms the loan percentage and an estimate of the repayment, including outstanding interest, fees and arrears.
7. Legal undertaking. Homes England sends your conveyancer a list of items for the undertaking. If completion slips by more than a week after that, a new undertaking and fresh repayment figure may be needed.
8. Authority to Complete. Issued within 5 days of receiving the legal undertaking (or once a payment plan is agreed). It is the green light.
9. Completion. Your conveyancer sends the funds, then Homes England checks the figure matches, confirms to your solicitor, and applies to the Land Registry to remove the charge.

For how the money moves on the day, see our walkthrough of checking your mortgage redemption statement, because you will be doing the same for your lender in parallel.

What if your valuation runs out before completion?

It happens more than it should. You get the valuation early to be organised, the buyer's survey throws up a problem, and suddenly month three arrives with no completion date. The report is dead after three months.

There is a rescue, but the window is narrow. Go back to the same RICS firm and surveyor within two weeks of the expiry date. Gov.uk lists two options. A letter from the surveyor on headed paper, addressed to Homes England, can extend the original by one month. Or the surveyor can produce a desktop valuation that extends it by three months. A desktop valuation must refer to the original report, say clearly that it is a desktop valuation, and include at least six comparable sales from the last year if the value has changed (or state plainly if six are not available). Send it within 5 working days.

Miss the two-week window, or fail to complete inside the extension, and you pay for a whole new report. That is a few hundred pounds, depending on the surveyor, for a few days' carelessness. My advice is simple: do not commission the valuation until you have a buyer who looks serious. If you can, line it up so completion is at least four to six weeks inside the three-month life of the report.

When should you get the valuation?

There is a tension here. The Memorandum of Sale is required for the application, so you cannot finish the paperwork before you have a buyer. But the RICS report is the slow part, and the clock on it starts the day it is issued.

The sensible order for most people:

• List the home, and agree a price range with your agent and an informal view of what a surveyor will likely say.
• Instruct your solicitor early, so searches and your side of the contract pack are ready.
• Book the RICS valuation the week an offer is accepted, so the report is fresh and the buyer's mortgage process is already moving.
• Send the report within five working days. Not "when I get round to it".

If you are selling a flat, tell Homes England before you contact a surveyor about anything that might affect the value, and check whether your block has external cladding that needs specialist valuation. Gov.uk says this explicitly. A conservatory without a building control certificate, or a planning breach, counts too. It's the same logic as any sale: the problem is cheaper to disclose early than to discover at exchange. Our guide to selling a flat with cladding or EWS1 problems explains how those issues hit value and mortgageability.

What does Homes England do with the valuation?

It uses the market value to work out your repayment. It can reject a report if the surveyor did not follow the instructions, or if the figure looks too high or too low compared with similar properties. If that happens you provide, and pay for, a new report.

This is why choosing the surveyor matters. Cheapest is not always best. A well-evidenced report with strong comparables and sensible commentary is less likely to be bounced, and bounced reports cost you time and money. Check the surveyor knows it is for Help to Buy redemption, not a standard mortgage valuation.

Gov.uk does not describe an appeals process if you disagree with a figure. So the practical lever is simply getting a robust, defensible report at the outset. If you want a rough sense of value before you commission it, our guide on how much your house is worth and the free house valuation page will get you in the right range.

Will the interest from year 6 change what you should do?

Yes, and it should change the timing. The first five years are interest-free. From the fifth anniversary the loan costs 1.75% of the original loan a year, paid monthly. Gov.uk's example: a £200,000 home with a 20% loan (£40,000) means £700 a year, or £58.33 a month. That interest does not reduce the loan. It is purely the price of borrowing.

It also rises. Each April from year 6 the rate goes up by an inflation-linked amount, and the page puts it at RPI + 1% for 2013 to 2021 loans and CPI + 2% for 2021 to 2023 loans. Gov.uk's own worked example on a £62,000 loan shows monthly interest climbing from £90.42 in year 6 to £137.25 by year 10 if RPI runs at 10%, or £114.14 if it runs at 5%. The wording on the page is a little inconsistent about what happens when inflation is zero, so check your own letter or ring Homes England on 0300 123 4123 for the exact figure on your loan.

The practical point: if you are close to the end of year 5, there is a real incentive to complete before the first interest payment falls due, though I would never rush a sale into a worse price to save a few hundred pounds. Do the arithmetic. A month or two of interest is small next to a £40,000 discount.

• Your side (deposit and mortgage) 80%
• Homes England's share, at any value 20%

That second bar never changes. Whether the home doubles or halves, Homes England holds the same percentage of whatever it is worth. That is the cleanest way to think about the loan: it is a fixed slice, not a fixed debt.

Can you repay part of the loan before selling?

You can. The minimum part repayment is 10% of the market value, you need a chartered surveyor's valuation for each repayment, and there are administration fees for changing the loan. Part repayments reduce the base the interest is charged on.

If you are planning to sell anyway, a part repayment rarely makes sense. You pay for a valuation, you pay a fee, and you free up cash you will receive back on sale. The only case where it helps is if you are staying put for a while and want to stop the interest running, and that is a different decision from the one this article is about.

Should you remortgage and keep the home instead?

Some owners reach year 5, see the interest coming, and ask whether selling is necessary at all. Remortgaging to clear the equity loan is the usual alternative. The equity loan has to be repaid at the same market-value maths, you pay for the RICS report, and your new lender needs to be happy with the loan-to-value. If your home has risen sharply, you may find the lending you need is out of reach at today's loan-to-value limits.

That is a conversation for a mortgage adviser. If it is a pure choice between staying and selling, our guide to early repayment charges when you sell covers the other mortgage cost that can bite when you leave a deal early.

Cash buyer, agent or investor: which suits a Help to Buy owner?

Many Help to Buy owners are first-time-buyer-age households who now want to move up, relocate for work, or split up. They need certainty, and often speed. A cash buyer can deliver both. It also carries the biggest financial risk for you, because of the "higher of" rule.

I'm not anti-cash buyer. I run a comparison service, and for some homes (a flat with a cladding problem, say) a cash sale is the only realistic route. But I'd say this plainly: a Help to Buy owner should get the RICS valuation done before accepting any discounted offer, and should always ask the question "after the equity loan, what do I actually receive?". If a quote cannot answer that, it is not a real quote.

To compare, start with our overview of the best house buying companies, and see how cash house buyers price offers. If you simply want the fastest realistic route, selling a house fast sets out the options, and selling a flat fast does the same for apartments.

A cash buyer's solicitor will want sight of the redemption letter and the Authority to Complete in the same way an ordinary buyer's would. Make sure your own conveyancer starts the Homes England process the day an offer is accepted, not the day contracts are drafted.

The seven mistakes I see Help to Buy sellers make

1. Using a bank or agent valuation. Gov.uk is clear that bank or mortgage valuations are not accepted. Only the RICS report meets the rules.
2. Waiting too long to send the report. Five working days, and the clock for three months is already running.
3. Letting the report expire. The extension window is two weeks. After that you are buying a new one.
4. Accepting a discount without doing the sum. The discount is yours alone.
5. Ignoring arrears. No Authority to Complete until fees and interest are cleared or a plan is agreed.
6. Hiring a general conveyancer who has never handled a redemption. It can be done by anyone competent, but experience saves days.
7. Assuming the old number still applies. The balance on your original paperwork is not what you owe. Ask for a current estimate.

What if the sale price won't cover everything?

This is the nightmare scenario, though If the proceeds do not cover the mortgage, the equity loan and the costs of sale, you have a shortfall. Gov.uk's guidance says that if sale funds do not cover the total, you must make an additional payment. No Authority to Complete will be issued until everything owed is repaid or a payment plan is agreed.

If that sounds like you, please do not simply stop paying and hope. Talk to your mortgage lender and Homes England early, get proper debt advice, and read our guide to stopping repossession if arrears have already built up. Options exist, but they narrow the longer you wait.

For a home that has proved hard to sell for other reasons, the sell an unsellable house page and our piece on why a house isn't selling are worth a look. Stale listings drag prices down, and the equity loan is calculated on the valuation, not the listing price you end up at.

A note on new-build resales and Wales

Most Help to Buy homes were new builds, and some come with extra baggage when resold: estate management charges, short or long leases, and builder-specific warranties. Our new build resale guide deals with those. If you are not sure what any of the jargon means, our property jargon explained page keeps definitions short.

Help to Buy equity loans closed to new applications in England, but you can still apply for one in Wales. This guide is about the English Homes England scheme. If you bought in Wales, the Welsh Government's scheme has its own administrator and rules, so check with them before assuming anything above applies.

How common is repayment, really?

Government figures to 31 March 2019 show 221,362 equity loans issued since April 2013, of which 30,645 (13.8%) had been repaid. Of the 2013 to 14 cohort, 10,246 of 19,754 loans had been repaid by that date. Those numbers are old now and the picture has moved on, but they show something useful: even in the early years, large numbers of owners were redeeming. You are not unusual if you are doing this.

Your Help to Buy sale checklist

• Find your Help to Buy account number and ring 0300 123 4123 (Mon to Fri 8am to 8pm, Sat 9am to 1pm) to check what you currently owe in interest, fees and arrears.
• Instruct a conveyancer who has handled redemptions.
• Line up a RICS valuation for the week an offer is accepted.
• Keep the report safe and send it within five working days.
• Check any discounted offer against the equity loan sum before you reply.
• Diarise the valuation expiry and the two-week extension window.

If you would rather see what the market will actually pay before committing to a route, you can compare offers with a free valuation. There is no obligation, and you can put your equity loan figure side by side with each offer to see what really lands in your account.