Two-year fixes see the sharpest rises as major lenders continue to hike rates
Barclays has announced increased rates of as much as 40 basis points on a wide range of existing-customer residential mortgages, from tomorrow, 2 April, while cutting prices on selected products.
The high street lender is increasing rates across numerous residential purchase and remortgage deals for existing borrowers. Some of the largest moves are on two-year fixed rates, including the 75% loan-to-value (LTV) fix at 4.81% with no fee, which will rise by 40 basis points to 5.21%.
Several other two-year fixed products will also increase by 0.40%, with further uplifts of between 0.14% and 0.35% elsewhere in the existing-customer range.
“Most of the big lenders have raised their rates again, so we have pretty much had another full round of mortgage price hikes over the last few days,” said Aaron Strutt (pictured right), product director at Trinity Financial.
“These latest Barclays price hikes are not pretty, especially with most of the new fixes either priced just below or above 5%. Nationwide, NatWest and Halifax have the cheapest two-year fixes at the moment priced around 4.80%.
“Barclays does not appear to be pulling its tracker rates, and as they start from 4% they are 1% lower than the fixes. Borrowers could take a tracker, switch to a fixed rate when they see a decent deal and hope the base rate at least stays the same for a while.”
Meanwhile, Barclays is also reducing the rate on its purchase Springboard five-year fix at 100% LTV with no fee, cutting it from 5.64% to 5.54%. The product has a minimum loan size of £5,000 and a maximum of £500,000.
In the wider purchase and remortgage range, the lender is also trimming rates on offset tracker products at 75% LTV. The two-year offset tracker with a £1,749 fee will fall from 4.97% to 4.82%, while the five-year offset tracker with the same fee will reduce from 5.00% to 4.85%. Both have a £5,000 minimum loan and a maximum loan of £2 million.
The moves follow last week’s increases of up to 55 basis points, when Barclays raised rates across residential and buy-to-let products, including changes affecting existing customers and new business.
“The swap rate market has been calmer, but we are not expecting to see a lot of cheaper rates available until the war in the Middle East stops,” Strutt said.
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