Three of the ‘top six’ mortgage lenders have hiked their mortgage rates today – but there is hope it’s just a temporary ‘blip’.
NatWest is increasing fixed rate deals by 0.10% for existing borrowers who switch to one of its products at the end of their current deal as of tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Santander is hiking fixed and tracker rates for new customers and existing customer transferring to another Santander deal. However, it is also cutting some residential fixed rates for remortgagers and all its buy-to-let rates.
Halifax has also announced it will increasing its fixed rates by 0.2% from Wednesday.
It’s not just the ‘big’ lenders raising their prices, Co-operative Bank has also revealed it will be raising rates by up to 0.72%.
The news lenders are making more rate rises will come as blow to borrowers who will have been hoping prices would fall further following the positive start to the year.
Katy Eatenton, mortgage & protection specialist at Lifetime Wealth Management, who was speaking via the Newspage agency said: “This week hasn’t started how we would have hoped. Three of the big six lenders have now announced rate increases.
“This is even worse given that many high street banks aren’t currently sourcing at the top of the list when looking for products.
“This confirms that they are not increasing prices to reduce volumes of business, so they may be anticipating that the next set of inflation data may not be as positive as we would like.”
However, SWAP rates – which influence how lenders price their mortgages – are starting to fall again so there is hope the price hikes we are seeing at the moment may just be a blip.
Ranald Mitchell, director at Charwin Private Clients, also via the Newspage agency said: “Yet another lender putting rates up following on from Santander, NatWest and Co-op.
“This latest round of hikes will be viewed as market exploitation by cynics, especially given underlying SWAP market rates appear to be easing down. This could be a smash and grab by mortgage providers before a spate of potential rate cuts.”
