interest-rates
, mortgages
, swap-rates
Recently, in the UK, fixed-versus-variable sterling swap rates have been falling - they’re lower than they were a month ago, six months ago, 12 months ago.
And yet fixed-rate mortages are going up: ones at lower rates have been withdrawn, and have been replaced by mortgages with equivalent terms except at higher rates.
Aren’t fixed rate mortgages driven by the rates in the swap market? The chart below is taken from the resource that I find very useful, CLP’s swap-rates charts (no connection except as a lurker of their data).
Their swap rates are based on:
a loan of circa 5m and interest only throughout the term.
Have I completely misunderstood what I’m reading in these charts? Or is the fixed-rate mortgage market diverging from the fixed-versus-variable sterling swap rate market? If the latter, why? Is it as simple as the supply of fixed-rate money for residential mortgages drying up, faster than the supply of fixed-rate money for commerce is? Or are higher fixed-rate mortagages reflecting a perception amongst lenders of risk in the housing market rising, relative to the rest of the fixed-rate market?
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