Lloyds has joined the rush of banks cutting mortgage rates with subsidiary Halifax, the UK’s largest mortgage lender, confirming it will introduce lower rates from Friday.
Rivals HSBC, TSB and Nationwide all said yesterday they were lowering rates following hopes that the recent spate of Base Rate rises from the Bank of England might be coming to an end.
UK inflation numbers are due next week and if these undershoot expectations there could be another round of mortgage rate cuts, brokers are suggesting.
Rob Gill, managing director at mortgage broker Altura Mortgage Finance, told the Standard: “All eyes will now be on next week's inflation figure, due on August 16th”.
“If this confirms a further fall in inflation, a mortgage price war in September cannot be ruled out as lenders seek to make up for a quiet July and August.”
HSBC cut rates on a range of two, three and five-year fixed-rate mortgages from today, its second cut in a matter of weeks.
Nationwide reduced rates on fixed deals by up to 0.55 percentage points, with those buying or re-mortgaging on five-year 60% loan-to-value deals able to get interest of 5.64%.
TSB's cuts meanwhile will take its cheapest five-year fix even lower than this to 5.44% though, with some reductions set to be by up to 0.4 percentage points.
Markets are now anticipating UK interest rates will peak at around 6%, according to AJ Bell analyst Laura Suter, having previously feared rates in excess of 7%.