Nationwide may consider expanding into the specialist buy-to-let (BTL) sector, dependent on stability returning to the market.

During a panel session at the Mortgage Solutions Buy to Let Event, when asked whether Nationwide had any appetite to branch into the specialist BTL market, Adrian Scoates, corporate account manager, said: “Maybe.” 

“We want to be a major player in the buy-to-let market, simple as that. From our perspective as a building society, we not only want to help people to own their property but also help people to invest in properties, and those who are tenants as well,” he added. 

He said more Nationwide customers would be tenants rather than landlords, so a broad offering would help to support all circumstances. 

Scoates added: “As always, trying to roll out a proposition just seems to take quite a long time, from a technology front, a risk view, a pricing view.” 

He then pointed to Nationwide’s small change, which was the introduction of a policy to “allow people to take a residential company and sell it into your limited company”. 

This was announced through its The Mortgage Works (TMW) brand last week, and the lender will now accept purchase applications to use a property as a BTL where the limited company is purchasing a home that is currently owned and lived in by one of its directors. 

Scoates said Nationwide’s business development managers (BDMs) were asked about this a lot, adding: “Expanding our limited company proposition is definitely on the agenda”. 

However, he said the uncertain market made the mutual cautious. 

Scoates said pricing was starting to climb up again, and added: “You start to get used to a market that [is] looking stable, you launch something fresh into it then you think ‘maybe not, we’ll hold on for a little longer’, so it’s a very uncertain market.”