We want to thank everyone who participated in the standout story competition. We invited brokers to submit their success stories of working with Nottingham Building Society to help their customers own their own homes. We received a lot of fantastic entries but we want to say congratulations to Ellis Shepherd from All About Mortgages, the Standout Story winner.

Please have a read of his amazing story!

"It was a complex case…

There were two self-employed applicants, a Ltd Co director and a sole trader on maternity with a planned route back to work.

I think Nottingham Building Society's flexible approach to working with self-employed buyers and underwriting helped this case go through.

We did have a couple of other options on the table, but with your appetite to help FTB, the client's good deposit, and your rates being top of the pile, it seemed an easy choice.

This was also before your recent changes to criteria!

You also helped two first-time buyers and their baby move into their first home. They had been saving for a long time to move out of their parents' and didn’t think it would be possible.

They had been to other brokers before me, who just tried some mainstream lenders and were told no, it could not work. But I had a few aces up my sleeve and one of them was Nottingham Building Society!

A sensible approach to checking deposit, checking they had additional funds saved to cover when maternity pay dropped, checking the return to work dates and that it seemed plausible, and checking with the accountant for a reference to make sure the limited company was financially sound all helped make this case work."

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in our Standout Story Competition. We're going to be sharing even more stories from brokers in the coming weeks.