Source: The Guardian —
Almost 1,000 mortgage packages were pulled overnight from the British market as panic seeps into the housing market in the wake of Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget.
Moneyfacts, which monitors the sector, said 935 out of 3,596 mortgage products had disappeared between Tuesday and Wednesday, double the previous record of 462 at the start of the pandemic lockdowns.
The sudden shift is threatening to stall the housing market, with borrowers saying they have been unable to secure loans or have had provisional offers withdrawn, while others are paying huge financial penalties to break their existing deals and in order to lock in fixed rates for longer.
From first-time mortgagees in shared ownership to people on house loans worth millions of pounds, there is a palpable sense of a personal finance timebomb, with markets predicting interest rates will almost triple from 2.25% to 6% next spring.
James Lindon-Travers of mortgage broker Lindon-Travers Associates in Surrey said he had a wealthy client willing to pay £95,000 in a penalty charge for breaking a fixed-rate deal.
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