A majority of mortgagees are on fixed rate deals these days. Most mortgagors offer the chance to switch to a new rate 3 months or so before your current rate ends. What’s the best advice? Well, wait and see for as long as you can seems to be the answer in current markets. Fixed rates are set, not on the basis of things as they are, but how they’re expected to be in 2, 5 or even 10 years if you’re going for the very long-term. After years of scientific research, we don’t have much of a clue how the weather will actually be next week, and much of this is a guessing game, too. The lenders must ‘secure’ the money they’re lending you against securities which effectively bet on future interest rates. The bets are that those rates are more likely to go down and so the deals are better this week than last, and perhaps much better now than they were a month or so. But who knew? Damned if you do, and all that.
“John Lewis foray into BTR could result in losses of £57m”
I did predict a while ago that Waitrose Homes rather than Waitrose Home Deliveries could be the future. John Lewis were probably the most benign big business to decide to go into the housing rental market, a move which could swing things away from the unpredictability of the mass of private landlords who dominate the sector.
