Been house hunting for a detached place in the countryside since January and finally found somewhere i like, offer verbally accepted last week at 415k. Problem is when i first started looking the broker was quoting me around 4.5% on a 5 year fix and now after the latest round of increases he’s saying 4.95% is the best he can get me. Saw the inflation figures yesterday at 3.3% and I’m wondering if this is just going to keep getting worse. The monthly difference isn’t massive (about £80) but it adds up over five years and tbh i don’t love the idea of locking in at what might be the peak. Anyone else in a similar position? Does it make sense to hold off and see if rates come back down or is that just wishful thinking at this point.
Nobody knows where rates are going. If you wait and they drop youll feel clever. If you wait and they go to 6% youll feel stupid. £80 a month is a takeaway and a pint. If you can afford the property at 4.95% just get on with it.
We bought our place in 2007, which as timing goes was spectacularly poor. The rate we got at the time felt eye-watering compared to what had been available six months earlier, and I spent the first year or two quietly kicking myself. Twenty years on it barely registers as a footnote.
The thing with rural detached properties is they tend to have a smaller pool of buyers and a smaller pool of suitable stock. If you have found somewhere you actually like, at a price you can afford at the current rate, that counts for quite a lot. I know several people down here who paused their searches “until things settled down” in various years and ended up either paying more later or never finding anything as good.
That said, @rb471956 is right that nobody has a crystal ball. The inflation number yesterday wasn’t encouraging, and with what is going on in the Middle East there is no reason to assume rates are coming down any time soon. I would lock in and not look back, personally.
Spoke to the broker this morning and he basically said the same as @rb471956, nobody knows, but his gut feeling is rates won’t come down before autumn at the earliest given the inflation numbers this week. He’s recommending i lock in at 5.1% on a five year fix and just forget about it. Annoying because two months ago that would have been sub 4.5% but i suppose that ship has sailed. @greenwhistle_hants your 2007 story is oddly comforting tbh.
Reading this thread with a grimace. We got our mortgage offer through in early March at 5.1% on a two year fix and at the time I thought that was painful. Looking at what’s available now I suppose we got lucky, if you can call 5.1% lucky.
The whole thing has moved so fast. In January I was budgeting based on rates around 4.5% and already feeling hard done by compared to what people were getting a year before that. Feels like the goalposts shift every month.
Bank held at 3.75% today as expected. But one member voted to raise. One voted to raise.
Think about what that means. The direction of travel is not downward. Average two year fix is now 5.42% according to Rightmove’s tracker this morning. That’s up from 4.25% before the Iran situation kicked off. Over a percentage point in a few months.
Anyone still holding out for rates to come down is gambling. Plain and simple. The MPC statement basically said higher inflation is coming and rate rises are likely later in the year. So we could easily be looking at 6% two year fixes by autumn.
@kev8421 your 5.1% from March looks like a bargain now. I’d be locking in whatever I could get today and worrying about refinancing in two years when things might actually have calmed down. Might. Please update if you do lock in.