Why getting financial advice now on mortgage rates is important!

 

Mortgage rates are shooting up and this has implications not only for day-to-day household budgets but it’s likely causing huge numbers of borrowers to struggle to pay their mortgages.

This will not just affect those on tracker rates who, for the first time in more than a decade, are seeing their mortgage rates increase, but also anyone coming off low fixed rates onto much higher rates in the months and years to come.

Recently, the European Central Bank (ECB) increased its key lending rates for the seventh time since last summer from 0 per cent to 3.75 per cent at present, with the threat of more rises on the horizon.

Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank (ECB) said recently: “We are not pausing the current cycle of interest rate increases as the outlook for price inflation across the 20 country single currency area remains “too high for too long”.

“We have more ground to cover and we are not pausing,” the ECB president said.

While recognising that many families are “hurting” as a consequence of the current rates cycle, Ms Lagarde said: “This is, unfortunately, not something that we can alleviate or attenuate because our task is to reduce inflation and the tools that work in that respect are the interest rates and we have to use the interest rates.

“I think the best we can do is tame inflation in a timely manner in order to facilitate a return to different interest rates that would not be as high in the future.”

Speaking recently, Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, hinted that help for mortgage holders could be forthcoming in October’s budget. He said the Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, set out the Government’s view on the ECB last week, suggesting it would “have to take into account the effect that the interest rate increases are having on normal people out there”.

With the expectation of further rate increases by the ECB over the next two months, many analysts predict that average tracker mortgage rates could rise to 5.65 per cent, based on an average tracker margin of 1.15 percentage points and a projected ECB base rate of 4.5 per cent. Almost 40 per cent of borrowers remain unaffected by rate increases for now, because they are on fixed rates, but these fixed rates will end soon.

It may be worth getting advice on breaking out and refixing your fixed rate now.

 

This article aims to give information, not advice. Always do your own research and/or seek out advice from a Financial Broker before acting on anything contained in this article.