In a boost for the UK housing market, a mortgage price war of sorts has started to break out among banks and building societies.
All the big UK lenders have started to offer fixed-rate mortgage deals with interest rates of less than 4%, according to surveys of the market.
It comes with the Bank of England widely expected to cut the base rate at next week's meeting of its monetary policy committee to 4.25% from the current 4.5%, with predictions that more cuts could be on the way.
The average rate for a two-year fixed deal is now 5.21%, according to the financial information service Moneyfacts. A typical five-year deal has a rate of 5.12%.
But lower-rate mortgage deals are available to borrowers with a large deposit and prepared to pay an up-front fee.
Nationwide Building Society, for example, last week cut several mortgage rates to below 3.9%.
Despite the BoE cutting the base rate by 0.5 percentage points between October and March, average mortgage rates rose during this period as financial markets predicted the central bank might have to slow its rate of cutting.
Berkeley Group Holdings PLC (LSE:BKG), Persimmon PLC (LSE:PSN), Taylor Wimpey PLC (LSE:TW.) and Barratt Redrow PLC (LSE:BTRW) were up between 1.4% and 0.5% on Monday, all up 6% over the past month, with Brekeley climbing 12% after a sharper fall last year.