Nottingham Building Society expands new build offer criteria

Nottingham Building Society, one of the UK’s largest mutual building societies committed to helping people own their own homes, has widened its acceptability criteria to help customers from overseas wishing to purchase a new build property. 

The society will now be allowing customers applying for a foreign national or returning expat mortgage to use new build incentives of up to 5% towards securing a deposit on a UK new build property. It is also making the process of extending the offer from six months to nine months simpler with an updated credit check.

Matt Kingston, Sales Director at Nottingham Building Society, said: “We’re delighted to bring this to the market, it’s what our brokers have been asking us for. It’s clear that the new build market will be key to helping the Government deliver challenging targets and anything we can do to add to this is very exciting for us. 

“We have spent our time working on this change alongside our exciting foreign nationals policy to ensure we can continue to deliver enhancements to our propositions. This is another small but important step forward for us in helping more customers into home ownership.  

“There are more changes to come to support this vital sector of the market. 2025 is going to be an exciting year for us all at Nottingham Building Society.” 

Craig Hall, Director of Strategic Partnerships at LSL Financial Services, said: “Nottingham Building Society’s expansion of new build incentives for foreign nationals is a welcome and significant development. As someone who works closely with new build brokers, there is an increasing demand from foreign nationals seeking to buy new build properties, therefore the combination of Nottingham Building Society’s lending policy and new build enhancements will provide further solutions for this cohort of homebuyers.” 

“The extended offer validity period to nine months is another practical step forward. It gives buyers, especially those overseas or recently returning to the UK, the time they need to navigate the home-buying process, in addition to providing greater certainty during window from exchange to completion.” 

It’s the latest move Nottingham Building Society has taken to make UK property ownership more accessible after it also expanded its mortgage product offerings to better serve foreign nationals and returning expats by broadening the range of accepted visas, including the Global Talent, Pre-settlement, and British National Overseas (BNO) visas, the society aims to make UK property ownership more accessible to skilled international workers.  

Nottingham Building Society also confirmed that it has adopted new auto-assisted underwriting technology to speed up its decision-making process for mortgage applications via intermediaries. The system will also support the development of innovative new propositions enabling them to lend where others may not.