Mortgage brokers were shocked as Halifax became the fourth major mortgage lender to up interest rates today, despite relative calm in the financial markets that tend to set home loan prices.
The country’s biggest mortgage lender joined fellow “big six” members NatWest and Santander, as well as the Co-Operative Bank, in increasing rates. The wave of increases that shocked brokers, who say that the changes go in the opposite direction to recent movements in the market for interest rate swaps, the financial instruments usually used to price mortgages.
