Nationwide Building Society is helping an unprecedented amount of people get on the housing ladder as borrowers capitalise on the easing of lockdown restrictions and the freeze on stamp duty.
This demand has been further amplified by first-time buyers eager to take advantage of the Society returning to 90 per cent Loan-to-Value (LTV) lending – one of the only mainstream lenders to have done so.
As a building society founded to help people into a home of their own, it is focused on supporting first time buyers. Currently Nationwide is processing around a third more mortgage applications than it was doing for the same period last year and is currently helping one in four of all the UK’s first-time buyers.
Industry and internal data highlight the large volumes of applications coming to the Society:
- Broker data: One of the UK’s largest brokers reported that since 21 July, Nationwide accounted for 30 per cent of all cases above 85% LTV and 40 per cent for first-time buyers.
- Decisions in Principle: Tripled the number of online House Purchase Decisions in Principle (DIP)2 year on year, completing 1,800 DIPs in July 2019 compared to around 7,300 in July 2020.
- First-time buyer website visits: Since the start of June, Nationwide has seen 270,000 visits (average of 30,000 per week) to its first-time buyer webpages – a 260 per cent increase on last year.
Joe Garner, Nationwide’s Chief Executive, said: “Nationwide Building Society was founded to help people into homes of their own and that remains the case as much today as it did [135] years ago. First-time buyers have been hit hard by the pandemic which is why we have started offering 90% LTV mortgages again. We are seeing an unprecedented demand from people wanting to get on the housing ladder, so we are calling on other lenders to join us and support future homeowners at this difficult time”.
[Sally Laker, Managing Director at Mortgage Intelligence, said: “Since the easing of lockdown and the introduction of the stamp-duty holiday, enquiries have soared with much of this coming from clients looking for higher LTV mortgages. Nationwide’s support for the market throughout the pandemic and its recent re-entry into the 90% LTV market for first-time buyers has been hugely welcome. Although, with so much business coming through at the moment, there is great intermediary demand for more lenders to offer higher LTV mortgages in order to fully satisfy client demand.”]
Further details of how Nationwide has supported the housing market during the Covid-19 pandemic can be found in notes to editors.
