To fix mortgage for 2 or 5 years

[moana1234]

So current fixed rate ends at the end of july and is currently 1.71% 😫 Best deal i can find is 4.32% for 5 year fixed rate or 4.48% for 2 year fixed rate. 24 years left on mortgage. So undecided as whether to gamble paying the higher interest rate in the hope rates go down in 2 years!! can anyone a bit more financially savvy than me advise what they would do??!!

My ex got into a real panic in about 2000 when we did a (5 year?) fix

I pointed out that we had a tight budget and a baby on the way

If rates went down and we had a fix then it was a bit oh dear (other words are available) BUT if they went up we were stuffed

So that might be a starting point, can you afford it if rates go up?

I don't see the rates going down I would go with the five year fixed.

Rates will not be coming down to the same as your current deal.

Bank of England base rate is historically always around 3% so Mortgages were somewhere between 3.5% to 4.5% with the former being considered good.

only due to the 2008 recession were rates so
low and they’ve been kept low to survive BREXIT and Covid.

they then shot up and are slowly but ever so slowly coming down.

Then way things are going and so much uncertainty especially due to Trump.
BofE will likely continue to do a slow reduce / hold pattern so I don’t think things will be radically better in two years.

so depends if you want to lock in a set rate you can afford for 5 or 2 years.

but you have to make peace with the fact that substantially higher rates than your current one are here to stay and actually are the norm. It’s just this generation of home owners who’ve never experienced them.

We're renewing mortgage in next 6 months - our rate is 1.49% which of course is a fairyland figure these days!

I would go with the 5-year fix OP - current rates are pretty 'normal' in historical terms and if anything would be more likely to go up rather than significantly further down.