Increase in Interest Rates to cost Clapham Home Owners £983.80 a year

Clapham homeowners will be among those affected by the latest rise in the Bank of England interest rates. The first increase in 10 years; they have just been raised from 0.25 percent to 0.5 per cent. This uplift comes as inflation hits a 51-month high of 2.9 per cent whilst the national unemployment rate is at an all-time low of 4.3 per cent.

Interestingly, the Governor of the Bank of England has indicated that the interest rate is likely to increase again over the next couple of years, but Mr Carney said mortgages and savings would not be affected in the short term. However, look at all the big banks and just about all of them have increased their standard variable mortgage rate..

The average Clapham mortgage is £393,521

I have to ask by how much Clapham homeowners (on variable rate or tracker mortgages) will see their repayments increase?

In the SW4, SW8, SW9, SW11 and SW12 postcodes there are 21,080 homeowners with a mortgage, of which 9.056 have a variable rate mortgage (the remaining have fixed rate mortgages). The total amount owed by those SW4, SW8, SW9, SW11 and SW12 homeowners with those variable rate mortgages is £3,563,717,643, meaning the average monthly mortgage payment for those home owners on variable rate mortgages before the interest rate rise was £3,068.37 per month and now its £3,150.36 per month … meaning

The interest rate rise will cost Clapham homeowners on average an extra £983.80 per year

Whilst this is the first raise in interest rates in over 10 years, it must be noted it is at a significantly low level compared to figures in the 1970s and early 1990s. Many of my readers talk of interest rates at 17 per cent when Sir Geoffrey Howe increased them to try and combat the hyperinflation (from the fallout of the financial crisis that hit Britain in the 1970’s) and Norman Lamont in September 1992 with the infamous Black Wednesday crisis, when interest rates were raised from 10% to 15% in just one day.

So, what will this interest rate actually do to the Clapham housing market?

Well, if I’m being frank – not a great deal. The proportion of Clapham homeowners with variable rate mortgages (and thus directly affected by a Bank of England rate rise) will be smaller than in the past, in part because the vast majority of new mortgages in recent years were taken on fixed interest rates. The proportion of outstanding mortgages on variable rates has fallen to a record low of 42.3 per cent, down from a peak of 72.9 per cent in the autumn of 2011.

If more Clapham people are protected from interest rate rises, because they are on a fixed rate mortgage, then there is less chance of those Clapham people having to sell their Clapham properties because they can’t afford the monthly repayments or even worse case scenario, have them repossessed.

However, and this will be of interest to both Clapham homeowners and Clapham buy to let landlords …

.. for every 1% increase in the Bank of England interest rate, it will cost the average Clapham homeowner on a variable rate mortgage £327.93 per month

So, what next? Because UK inflation levels are at 2.9 per cent (the country’s highest rate since April 2012) and the Bank of England is tasked by HM Government to keep inflation at 2 per cent using various monetary tools (one of which is interest rates) – you can see why interest rate rises might be on the cards in the future as increasing interest rates tends to dampen inflation.

Now of course there is a certain amount of uncertainty with regard to Brexit and the negotiations thereof, but fundamentally the British economy is in decent shape. People will always need housing and as we aren’t building enough houses (as I have mentioned many times in the Clapham Property Blog), we might see a slight dip in prices in the short term, but in the medium to long term, the Clapham property market will always remain strong for both Clapham homeowners and Clapham landlords alike.

I hope you enjoyed reading. If you are keen to take things further, be it to start from scratch, or do something a bit more interesting with your current portfolio... Start the conversation on email. I'd love to meet you in person of course at this month's Clapham Property Meet, so do come along. Click here for tickets and more info.