In September, West One announced that it had overhauled its BTL proposition and launched a bespoke service team that aims to tackle complex cases for landlords. To find out more about this development, BTL Insider sat down to chat with managing director Marie Grundy (pictured above).
The past year or so has seen West One engage in plenty of activity across the specialist finance market — from merging its bridging and development teams into one single division in September 2024 to launching into the commercial sphere in July of this year. For Marie, the time was also right for a rejig of the firm’s BTL offering.
“Having taken BTL under my wing earlier this year, it was a naturally a good time for me and my team to look at the proposition with a fresh pair of eyes. I think it had probably been a little while since we as a business had carried out that exercise.
“We've spent quite a few months gathering information, just to understand what worked really well about our proposition and what areas we could improve upon, and also to try and bring some of the successes that we've had in other areas of the business into the BTL division.”
At the heart of the new BTL proposition, said Marie, is West One’s newly created team of underwriters, who plan to take complex landlord cases all the way from start to finish. The team, which currently stands at around five or six, will service challenging cases involving larger portfolio landlords. While the fledgling team may be small at the moment, Marie is hoping that time and success will lead to it growing in future.
For Marie, the timing was great for the launch, with the market seemingly skewing itself towards professional landlords with larger portfolios.
“In terms of the renters’ reform, for example, we know that the restrictions that’s going to bring might mean that we'll see the exit of non-professional landlords,” said Marie.
“With more professional landlords, they'll certainly be playing more of a long-term game.”
“I think what we were trying to do is look at where our products could support professional landlords who will need to adapt their business approach and cater for those more complex borrowing needs.”
The new proposition ranges from asset classes such as standard properties through to small, medium and large HMOs, as well as MUFBs with loans up to £15m.
However, Marie is emphatic that West One’s new proposition is not just for large portfolio landlords, but also others that are currently underserved in the market.
“I think one of the big benefits of our proposition is that it is a catch-all product. So it's a really comprehensive product range that can meet the needs of part-time landlords and absentee landlords as well.”
Others that Marie sees as being underserved include first-time landlords and foreign nationals. Meanwhile, the minimum property value has been lowered in a bid to drive wider regional diversity.
West One’s new proposition is also now taking aim at those landlords with adverse credit.
“We've also taken the opportunity to revise our credit profiles, just to help landlords who would benefit from a lender that doesn't rely on credit score.
“One of the benefits of being a specialist lender is that you're looking at a deal holistically. You've got the opportunity to look at it on an individual basis, and we understand that not everybody’s credit profile is straightforward.”
With new rates and minimum/maximum lending amounts alongside the launch of the new complex-case BTL team, Marie is hoping that word will now spread across the broker community.
“We've delivered a lot of changes in one sweep. So over the next few months we will be really making sure that our broker partners understand all the changes we've delivered and how they can benefit their client base.”
