Mortgage Rate Rises

danlightbulb said:
The way the bonkers BOE takes decisions I wouldn't be surprised if they allowed US factors to influence their rate setting decisions. Even though it's a supply side factor completely outside of our control, these "economists" believe hurting our domestic money supply and increasing people's mortgages will somehow help the situation.
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I don't think it's due to that, there is a lot of competition in mortgage lending if anything the mortgage lenders will lend it as cheaply as possible whilst keeping a margin otherwise you just get out priced by everyone else.

It's all to do with confidence in the market.

Money just at constantly flows around in a big circle unless one day it doesn't, and that is the fear.

Again, I don't know what is going on in America, but it's obviously enough for whoever was going to lend hundreds of millions to whoever, who was then in turn going to lend that to whoever to go, wait a sec......

And that's all it takes.
 
The US economy is warming up quite well all things considered (see recent growth numbers), they have the companies and still have the ability to build actual *things*, unlike we do here. I would expect more rate cuts in the US. It would be naive to suggest that the BoE don't look at what the Fed does when settings rates *but* the big issue is the UK economy, it's pretty much done for and won't get better anytime soon. This means a fundamental divergence between the two, so they might go different directions.
 
FirebarUK said:
The US economy is warming up quite well all things considered (see recent growth numbers), they have the companies and still have the ability to build actual *things*, unlike we do here. I would expect more rate cuts in the US. It would be naive to suggest that the BoE don't look at what the Fed does when settings rates *but* the big issue is the UK economy, it's pretty much done for and won't get better anytime soon. This means a fundamental divergence between the two, so they might go different directions.
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UK manufacturing output in terms of gross value added is increasing. A lot of it is just automated now and needs a fraction of the workforce. It also focuses on high value manufacturing not cheap plastic widgets you get from China.

It’s not actually dissimilar to the USA in that regard.

The only thing that makes manufacturing look like it’s in decline is it’s becoming a smaller part of our GDP when in reality that’s just down to those other areas growing not manufacturing declining.

Nearly all US growth is coming from the big 6 tech companies which is fine but you have to recognise it’s very concentrated and isn’t something that most Americans are feeling because they don’t work for the big 6 or their supply chain.
 
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It's still utterly anaemic though and really misses the fundamentals in the direction of travel/futures - energy and raw material costs are way too high here for any sort of serious boom in the manufacturing sector in alignment with high tech trends.

The US on the other hand can capitalise significantly on the AI boom where we have no way of doing so, this will pull a long train across their entire tech, manufacturing and construction sectors.

Anyhow, since the trending outlook here is pretty poor, I think interest rate decisions ref: mortgage choices should be aligned accordingly. We're busy chasing away investment with crap government decisions and digging a hole for ourselves but I suppose if all else fails, they could just slap the rates down and make money printer go brrr some more, ala 2009.
 
Do most banks give offers with a 180 day period? Our really good 5 year fix ends on 31st August, so I’ve started looking around to lock a rate in as soon as I can (to then swap if rates improve).
 
I think thats pretty standard with mortgage offers..

I would say 6 months is a bit early and I've seen a couple of occasions where looking that flighty has wound up in rejections.
 
matt100 said:
I think thats pretty standard with mortgage offers..

I would say 6 months is a bit early and I've seen a couple of occasions where looking that flighty has wound up in rejections.
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Thanks. We’ll probably engage a few free broker so I’ll have a chat with them and make it clear that we would be looking early and then potentially want to switch later on.
 
SaBBz said:
Thanks. We’ll probably engage a few free broker so I’ll have a chat with them and make it clear that we would be looking early and then potentially want to switch later on.
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I’ve got a great one if you need a recommendation!
 
matt100 said:
I think thats pretty standard with mortgage offers..

I would say 6 months is a bit early and I've seen a couple of occasions where looking that flighty has wound up in rejections.
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Seriously? Why would a lender care if you look "flighty"? They actually want you to move to them. Never had this happen or heard of it happening.
Just apply as soon as you are in the 6 month window. You can always change it later.
 
We sold our house in September 2025 and have been renting since. We nearly bought another property with a 23-year mortgage but pulled back late on after questioning the long-term commitment.

We’ve now found a house we like that we could buy outright with no mortgage and have made an asking-price cash offer.

Has anyone else chosen mortgage-free over taking on long-term debt, and how did it work out for you?

Im 33 BTW so could definitely take on a mortgage but I want to retire in 5-7 years.
 
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Just sent my final over payment (5k) for this fix into my mortgage. I don't know if it's just the Halifax, but they always seem to take days to allocate it against the mortgage. It always makes me question if I have sent it to the wrong account by accident :D
 
casper_uk said:
Just sent my final over payment (5k) for this fix into my mortgage. I don't know if it's just the Halifax, but they always seem to take days to allocate it against the mortgage. It always makes me question if I have sent it to the wrong account by accident :D
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I remember when I sent my £58k over for the deposit of our first house and it was pooping it for days as they didn't confirm it until about 3 days later
 
ProStreet said:
Has anyone else chosen mortgage-free over taking on long-term debt, and how did it work out for you?
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it depends on how risk-averse you are.
if the mortgage interest rate is less than savings interest then taking out a mortgage is sensible and low risk - this earning more than the mortgage interest
in general (ie overall), taking out a mortgage and using the spare cash to invest in S+S usually will net you more than the mortgage interest rate - but as always with S+S...your investment is at risk

i was in the same boat as you when i bought my home in 2022, and could afford to buy it outright as a cash purchase
however, my mortgage interest was low (2.35% x 10 years), so i chose to put 50% downpayment and kept the other 50% in S+S instead...so for me...getting a mortgage worked out much better than a cash purchase.
personally, knowing that i have the funds to pay of the mortgage outright at any point in time is as good as not having a mortgage - the bonus to this, as above, is that my liquid funds are working harder to earn more money than if i would've just paid cash for the house
as always YMMV and do what's most comfortable for you
 
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ProStreet said:
We sold our house in September 2025 and have been renting since. We nearly bought another property with a 23-year mortgage but pulled back late on after questioning the long-term commitment.

We’ve now found a house we like that we could buy outright with no mortgage and have made an asking-price cash offer.

Has anyone else chosen mortgage-free over taking on long-term debt, and how did it work out for you?

Im 33 BTW so could definitely take on a mortgage but I want to retire in 5-7 years.
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The short answer is you're likely to grow your wealth more with a cheaper property owned outright and investing potential mortgage payments rather than buying an expensive property and taking out a big new mortgage. The former aligns much better to a (very) early retirement. You must have known this if you want to retire in 5-7 years - surely you're already modelling required retirement income, investment target needed to deliver that and what it'll take to get there in detail, given how near that is?
 
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