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Are lenders already upping rates?

ended 05. May 2022

Hey brokers, a journalist at the Mail Online wants to know if lenders are already increasing their variable rates? Have you had any alerts yet, or are you expecting to throughout the day or tomorrow? How quickly does this usually happen?

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Imran Hussain
Director at Harmony Financial Services
It only took a few mins for emails to start coming in from lenders to inform us anyone on a tracker product or variable rate will feel the effects of the rate rise immediately; the majority of lenders will review and factor in the rate rise over the new few weeks, some lenders may hold rates for as long as they can but if trends are anything to go by that won't be very long at all.
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Samantha Bickford
Mortgage and Equity Release Specialist at Mortgages with Clarity
"Broker alerts for lender interest rate increases have been coming thick and fast for the past couple of weeks in anticipation of the Bank's base rate rise. Lenders are adding and withdrawing deals from the market almost daily, and I fear this is only going to get worse. Brokers are having to juggle a very fast paced market where if you do not get an application submitted the very same day, the deal is more than likely gone by the morning. The Bank of England base rate rise was very much expected and lenders will have been prepared with their product changes as soon as this was announced. Variable rate increase alerts will be arriving in brokers' inboxes over the course of today and tomorrow. The markets' reaction to the BOE base rate rise will be immediate. This will further impact the finances of tracker and variable rate borrowers, My advice to any borrowers on a variable rate is, now is the time to fix your rate for the medium - long term if possible."
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Ashley Thomas
Director at Magni Finance
"Lenders have been expecting this and have increased their rates over the past couple of weeks. Some lenders have changed the rates with less notice than usual, changes within hours instead of a day's notice."
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Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser at Barnsdale Financial Management
"The base rate increased at midday Thursday, but that won't see an automatic increase in lenders' charge rates to customers, that normally takes a few days to filter through. Most mortgage contracts will give lenders a window of about 30 days to pass on any rate changes on a base rate tracker mortgage; rises tend to get passed on more quickly than drops in rate, but I'm sure that's a shock to no one. If you are on a discounted or standard variable rate deal then the rate is set by the lender, so it is their choice how much of today's increase is passed on and when. In theory, we could even see a rise of over 0.25%, it will be entirely down to what your lender choses to do on this type of deal. Some deals may be tracking another index, such as LIBOR or SONIA, these could well move by a completely different amount to the 0.25% the BoE has raised rates by. Check your mortgage offer carefully to fully understand the way your interest rate is calculated and if you need any help get in touch with your lender, or a professional mortgage broker who can look at it with you."