UK Property

Mortgage costs rise as interest rates expected to stay higher for longer


Banks are pushing up mortgage costs amid warnings that economic uncertainty could delay future rate cuts.

NatWest, Coventry Building Society and TSB raised rates on fixed mortgages on Friday, after Santander and Nationwide increased the cost of deals on Tuesday.

Meanwhile data from financial analyst Moneyfacts show average rates on two-year mortgages have risen from 5.59pc on Tuesday to 5.69pc today.

The increases will hit the 1.5 million homeowners who need to remortgage this year, likely on to much higher rates.

Nicholas Mendes, of mortgage broker John Charcol, said: “Markets were a little over-exuberant at the start of the year, and normality has set in. High street lenders had been sacrificing margin for volume in recent weeks, but this isn’t a viable long-term strategy.”

NatWest has increased the rates on some of its residential loans by up to 0.21pc while TSB’s have gone up by as much as 0.15pc.

Santander raised its fixed-rate mortgages by up to 0.16pc on both residential and buy-to-let loans this week as Nationwide announced plans to hike prices by up to 0.25pc.

Lenders had initially expected the bank rate to fall within the first half of year, however, this has now been pushed back as consumer price inflation remains stuck at 4pc.

As a result, swap rates – the main pricing mechanism for fixed rate mortgages and an indicator of where the market thinks interest rates will be at a future point – have risen sharply over the past month.



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