Help to buy scheme and BCAR

struggling1

This is a query regarding an issue of opting in or out of BCAR

I'm about to embark on building our own house which is a one off build, on a site owned by us. We will be engaging a contractor to build. We are debating whether we will opt in or out of the statutory certification under BCAR.

I've read somewhere that for selfbuilders, if we want to avail of the government Help to buy scheme , we must opt in to BCAR

Speaking to Revenue, they said that opting in to BCAR was not a requirement to availing of the Help to Buy scheme. Though advice from Revenue is down to the Revenue individual on the phone and we have found that they have been sometimes wrong on other stuff before.

At this point I am confused. Would anyone be able to clarify if opt in to BCAR is a requirement to avail of the Help to Buy Scheme.

Personally I'm not in favour of opting in, based on the costs involved and the difficulty of engaging an engineer to undertake this work.
My wife would only consider opting in to BCAR on the basis that, should we sell our house in the future it might be easier to convey if we had the statutory certification.

Gumbo

I was of the understanding that BCAR and the HTB Scheme were independent of each other. I would have assumes there was no requirement.