Mortgage fixed or variable

[Iammetoday]

Would you do variable or fixed now? I'm thinking they surely can only go down so variable is the way to go??

I wouldn't be banking on it going down soon.
OK, it might not rise too much further, but the days of tiny interest rates have gone. Don't be expecting them to go as low as they were few years ago in the foreseeable.

How much further do interest rates need to rise to make the fix you've been offered lower than the variable?

The majority view amongst Economists now is that we will have 1 or 2 more small rises to the Bank of England base rate, peaking at either 5.5% or 5.75%. by the end of the year.

Before slowly coming down from early 2024. A good outcome (for borrowers) could be the base rate falling to 4% by the end of 2024, which some Economists have forecast. However, the Bank of England has also cautioned that it is possible that their base rate could remain above 5% until 2026.

Am assuming you mean fixed or tracker? Definitely wouldn’t recommend variable.

Historic data shows that the anomaly in base rates is the period from 2009-2023 when rates were below 5%.

Before 2009 the thinking when the base rate was 5% would have been this - "Surely rates can't go much lower so fixed is the way to go".

The best thing you can do is look at the data yourself. The worst thing you can do is make decision based on the news headlines. Just when did anyone decide that they wanted a reporter to make their financial decisions anyway?

I'm in the same boat! We have until 20th September to decide whether to pull out of our new 5 year fix offer and move to variable instead..

I switched to a tracker recently, even with the recent rise it’s below most current fixed rates at 5.39%.