Today I wanted to touch on mortgages. Now before we start, I will make it clear I am not a mortgage advisor therefore I cannot give out individual advice plus we must also remember that everybody’s circumstances are different.
Lancaster and Morecambe has a wide range of excellent mortgage advisors and brokers. PBS Financial Solutions, Hayley Skinner from The Mortgage Partners and Kieron Bassett Financial Services are just some of the excellent options out there (there are others too). What I wanted to touch on was how the number of mortgage products has grown and how there is now much more choice out there!
Across the mortgage market product choice is increasing. According to Moneyfacts, there are more than 4,300 different deals available. This is the first time since August 2022 that product choice has risen above 4,000.
Competition between lenders in the mortgage market is good news for prospective buyers and home movers. The average interest rate charged on both two-year (5.44%) and five-year deals (5.2%) fell in February for the third month in succession. We’ve also been informed that there are mortgage deals now available on 5-year fixed at under 4%!
The latest falls put the cost of both products back to October 2022. This is despite the fact that the Bank of England has since raised the base rate of interest by 1.75%.
Product availability has risen across all deposit levels, with close to 150 deals available for those with a 5% deposit, and nearly 540 for those with a 10% deposit. For those requiring a loan-to-value of 60% or less, deals with rates below 5% are now available.
Now, of course, there are lots of people who have benefitted from very low mortgage rates over the past couple of years. Realistically though, I think we all need to realise that those days have gone and are highly unlikely to return. People feel they have it bad day today, but I’m sure many of us remember when mortgage rates were even higher, 7% + when I was a first-time buyer in the late 1990s and even higher at almost 15% in the late 1980s. Maybe they aren’t so bad today……
My name is Michelle Gallagher. If you would like to chat about the Lancaster and Morecambe Housing Market I am here to help. You can email me at michelle@jdg.co.uk or call me on 01524 843322.
Thanks for reading
Michelle