Story for The Sunday Times: Those who mortgaged just before the mini-Budget

We took our residential re-mortgage out with Barclays just about at the fag end of Boris's premiership. While I would love to say I could foresee the mortgages crisis looming, the reality is, it seemed like something was seriously wrong with interest rates as they continued to be artificially low at the start of 2022. This was something that contributed to our decision to lock in a 1.31% 5Y fixed mortgage with Barclays (even though a market beating 0.99% 2Y fix was available at the time). Agreed, this was about a quarter before Truss took charge, but I am still grateful we are happily perched on an astonishingly low rate for the next four years.

At the time, it was a very strange period and clients were faced with a real conundrum of buying a property. The tracker products were slowly coming to the forefront, but many were opting for a 2-year fixed period due to the sheer chaos that ensued. I think those that remained with their lender for product transfers, were advised to see how their rate changes for the next 6 months.

I think most didn't regret their choices as the two-year fixes were locked and never really reduced in the second quarter of this year. However, those who took 5-year products certainly do not regret their decision. In particular, a first-time buyer opted for a 5-year fix at 3.50% for which he reminds me of how good our advice was at the time.

For those in the crux of the mini-budget and the interest rates at 6% plus, I found that I was resubmitting applications in February 2023 time due to the rates being nearly 1% lower than at this period.

Oh yes, we call these clients the "very grateful clients" - We often get emails from this batch of clients who are thankful for us tying up their deals so quickly and the fact that a lot of them completed way after all the rates went berzerk but they still gained from the lower rate we arranged. It's been a CRAZY 12 months in the financial adviser world.

I carried out a 20+ remortgage of a portfolio just before the rates shot up. I;ll see if he wants to have a say
austyn@Mortgagesforactors.com - my guy is in spain but will consider when he is home. Let me know if you want to follow up

How quickly a year goes! Just before the mini-budget, the vast majority of people were doing 5 year fixed products or tracker products, People were divided into two camps, people who predicted rates would get a lot higher for a long period of time or people who thought we were at the peak already and they wouldn’t go up much more and come down quickly after. Little did any of us foresee Liz Truss and her antics!
The clients who took 5-year products now boast of being financial Savants while the clients who went to tracker mortgages were frantically scrambling around to switch to fixed products as we didn’t know how bad it could possibly get. As with most things in life timing & luck is everything, It’s a sliding doors moment, and mortgages are the same.

As an avid property investor, I always consider market trends, including interest rates. Over the past decade, we've seen historically low rates from a 25-year perspective. So I opted for long-term fixed-rate mortgages as I expanded my portfolio annually. However, with current rising rates, I've shifted to variable rates. Forecasts suggest a rate decrease in two years, making fixed-rate mortgages more appealing then. Intelligent investors are capitalizing on the current buyer's market by purchasing off-plan properties with extended build times, allowing them to lock in today's prices with interest rates that will take effect in two years.