Martin Lewis admitted he was worried as he issued a mortgage warning.
The consumer champion appeared on today's edition of Good Morning Britain, which was hosted by Ed Balls and Susanna Reid. The finance guru is set to host an emergency mortgage episode of Money Show Live after rates hit the highest level for 15 years.
Mortgage costs have soared as lenders grapple with inflation and uncertainty over interest rates set by the Bank of England. Ed asked Martin about what people should do if they are unsure about mortgages.
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The broadcaster said: "Right now, if I was coming off a fixed-mortgage, I'd be rather wary of another fixed now... and I'd go for variable for a while, would that be a wise thing to do?"
Martin admitted there was no answer to the question as the UK is currently experiencing an inverted yield curve. He added: "Normally, short term interest rates are cheaper than long term and if you look right now a five-year mortgage is cheaper than a rwo-year mortgage and a 10-year mortgage is cheaper than a five-year mortgage because they predict in the long term interest rates will come back down."
The UK is currently at base interest rates of 5% and the consensus is this will rise to between 5.5 and 5.75%. However, Martin warned some outliers predicted this could rise up to 7% and will only start to come down at the end of 2024.
Martin has shared important advice to people amid the cost-of-living crisis and he explained how he was concerned by the number of people who tell him they are going to wait until interest rates return to a normal rate before setting one a fixed or variable rate. He said: "I think that's a really dangerous thing to say.
"What's tough for anybody under the age of 35 to understand is the last 15-odd years from 2007 onwards of super low interest rates is the anomaly. If you look in a historic context, the rates we have now is the norm roughly for the prior 300 years. We've now had a 15 year anomaly so there is no guarantee that interest rates will drop down to those super low levels.
"That is not the same as me saying they won't but you can't say they must"
Martin explained the best practice is decide your mortgage rate based on your own finance. He added: "If there is a fix out there that you can afford and it gives you surety that you know exactly what you want to pay and that surety is most important to you than fix. If you've got room to pay the variable rates for a few months then you may want to do that but there is a risk things can get more expensive."
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