Residential mortgage lending

Nationwide has a role to play in helping individuals who want to buy their own homes and we have a long history of financing shared ownership housing. In 2006/07 we successfully piloted an Open Market Homebuy shared equity mortgage in response to the Government's call to lenders to support this part of the housing market.

In addition, as part of our commitment to support affordable housing and help first-time buyers, we continued to ask the Government to increase the stamp duty threshold in line with house price inflation.

With figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders showing that 56% of first-time buyers now pay stamp duty, compared to just 48% a year ago (as of March 2007), this would free up thousands of homebuyers each year from the burden of the tax. Read the Press Release.