Mortgage rates are spiking - how bad will it get?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business, Investing, News, Business News

4.4 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mortgage rates have shot up this week as the impact of the conflict with Iran for inflation and interest rates sinks in.

Banks and building societies have been racing to raise their fixed rates - with some even pushing them up twice in the space of a few days.

It comes in response to a sudden switch around in expectations for the Bank of England base rate, but will this flurry of hikes continue or are the concerns overdone.

On this episode of the This is Money Podcast, Georgie Frost, Helen Crane and Simon Lambert look at what's going on in the mortgage market - and what you can do about it if you are buying a home or need to remortgage.

Plus, Simon has broken with the habit of a lifetime and actually fixed his energy bills for once. He explains why you should too - and how there are still potentially price cap-beating or matching deals out there.

Helen outlines the nine biggest mistakes you can make with your pension - and what they could cost you.

And finally, if you have a Nationwide current account and are hopefully in line for some free money from Fairer Share, this is what you must do in the next two weeks.

Email us hello@dmgmedia.co.uk

Text us 020 7938 6000.

Hosts: Georgie Frost, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce, Helen Crane

Producer: Georgie Frost

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Trading 212.
0:05.7	I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Simon Lamber today is Helen Crane.
0:09.2	And coming up, mortgage rates are rising and the best deals are disappearing fast.
0:13.5	It comes at a time when over a million Britons are coming off ultra-low mortgages this year.
0:18.1	What's going on and what should you do if that's you? Also today,
0:22.3	Simon has fixed his energy bills, he thinks you should too, plus the nine biggest pension
0:27.1	mistakes you can make and what they could cost you and nationwide fair a share. What should
0:32.2	customers hoping for a £100 payment do with their money? Don't forget, you stay up to say with all the
0:36.9	latest breaking money news, just go to this ismoney.com.
0:39.2	UK or download the app.
0:41.9	But first, mortgage rates continue to rise on a daily basis at the moment
0:46.2	and the cheapest deals are being pulled from the market just as quickly.
0:49.5	In fact, in a 48-hour period last week, almost 500 deals disappeared. That's the fastest rate since the
0:56.1	disastrous Liz Truss' mini budget, if you remember, back in 2022. We're not there yet. Back then,
1:02.4	over 900 went in just one day. But still, it's not good for the over 1 million households
1:08.7	coming off those ultra-cheap deals that they signed in 2021.
1:13.0	Helen, goodness me, what's going on out there and why?
1:18.2	So to illustrate this a bit, I've just had an email from a mortgage broker, which has eight separate attachments, and all the attachments are different lenders announcing that they're
1:28.3	about to put their rates up. So that's kind of how it's going at the minute. Over the last
1:34.6	couple of weeks, how far are we into World War III? Two weeks now almost. So lenders have just
1:40.5	been putting their rates up again and again. Some of them have done it twice in two days,
1:46.0	just basically to keep up with expectations around inflation and interest rates. Because as I think we've
	...

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