Mortgage rates will be cut after the Bank of England reduced the base rate to 0.5 per cent.
Cheltenham & Gloucester and Lloyds TSB announced that its standard variable rate (SVR) will receive the full 0.5 per cent cut.
This will drop it down to 2.5 per cent.
Stephen Noakes, commercial director for Cheltenham & Gloucester, said that the market has bottomed out for fixed rates, “give or take a little movement”, and advised lenders to try to get into a fixed-rate deal. “Even those who may currently be sat on a record low SVR should weigh up the immediate bonus it offers versus the longer term savings a five or ten year fix will secure,” he said.
Abbey mortgages are also having rate cuts, with the SVR being decreased by 0.45 per cent and existing variable rate deals cut by 0.5 per cent.
As with Lloyds and Cheltenham & Gloucester, the reductions will be made from the beginning of April.

There is no chance of the government including a stamp duty holiday for all in the next Budget, an expert has stated.

Peter Cosmetatos, director of finance and investments at the British Property Federation (BPF), said that the organisation is not campaigning for such a move.

“I don’t think there is the slightest prospect that the government would do it, so it would be a waste of time to ask for it,” he said.

While stamp duty brings in only half of what was expected, he continued, it still amounts to “hundreds of millions a month” and he pointed out that the “government’s coffers are pretty bare”.

Last September, the government announced a temporary suspension of stamp duty on properties worth up to £175,000.

The Land Registry has said that 32,985 transactions have been affected by this.

According to HM Revenue and Customs, stamp duty is now one per cent for properties bought for anything between £175,000 and £250,000.