The Bank of England base rate has been held at 3.75% for four meetings in a row, most recently on 18 June 2026. That stability is good news if you're on a tracker mortgage, but it hides a messier picture underneath. Inflation, which had fallen close to target through 2024 and early 2025, rose to 3.3% in the year to March 2026 and has stayed above the Bank's 2% target since.

The reason is the conflict in the Middle East, which pushed up oil prices and has fed through into household energy and transport costs. Before the conflict began, most economists expected the Bank to cut rates once or twice this year. That expectation has now flipped. Markets are pricing in the chance of a rate rise before the end of 2026, and one member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee already voted for an increase at the June meeting.

This is the part that matters if you're buying. Fixed-rate pricing doesn't simply follow the base rate. It's driven by swap rates, which reflect what lenders think borrowing will cost over the next two to five years. When swap rates jumped after the conflict began, average fixed mortgage rates climbed sharply, with two-year fixed deals rising from around 4.83% in early March to over 5.7% within weeks. That alone added close to £300 a month to repayments on a typical £250,000 mortgage.

The more recent news is better. Through May and June, major lenders including Nationwide, NatWest, Barclays, TSB, and Santander have been cutting fixed rates again as swap rates eased back from their peak. Rates aren't back to where they were at the start of the year, but the direction over the past few weeks has been downward.

Nobody, including the Bank of England, knows with confidence where this goes next. The next base rate decision is 30 July 2026. Most analysts expect another hold, but a recent survey found a quarter of the public expect rates to rise this year, a quarter expect them to fall, and the rest are split between staying the same and not knowing. That kind of uncertainty isn't normal, and it reflects unpredictable global events rather than the usual economic cycle.

If you have a mortgage offer expiring soon, or you're coming to the end of a fixed deal, brokers have been saying the same thing. Don't wait and hope. Lock in a rate while it's available, ideally with a lender that lets you switch to something better later without penalty if rates fall again before completion.

For first-time buyers and movers in the £300,000 to £500,000 range, which covers much of the Culcheth and Lowton market, the swing in monthly payments between February's rates and April's rates was big enough to change what some buyers could realistically afford. That's cooled urgency in parts of the market, but it hasn't stopped sales happening. Properties priced correctly are still moving.

Higher, less predictable mortgage rates mean buyers are being more careful with their numbers and slightly more cautious about stretching to the top of their budget. That makes correct pricing from day one even more important than usual. A buyer working out affordability at 5.5% rather than 4.5% is doing different sums to the buyer from two years ago, and an overpriced property gives them an easy reason to walk away rather than negotiate.

Buyer demand hasn't gone away though. House price growth forecasts for 2026 remain positive, somewhere between 1% and 5% nationally, with the North West expected to perform in line with or ahead of that. Mortgage rate volatility changes the conversation buyers have with their broker. It doesn't mean buyers have left the market.

Rates have moved around more in 2026 than anyone expected at the start of the year, driven by a geopolitical event rather than the usual economic signals. The base rate has held steady through it, fixed rates spiked and have since eased back, and the rest of the year remains genuinely hard to call. If you're weighing up a move, speaking to a whole of market mortgage broker now, rather than waiting for clarity that might not come for months, is the sensible step.