People ask me what mortgage rates are doing far more often than they ask me anything else. The honest answer this autumn is: not very much, and that is more interesting than it sounds.
Moneyfacts put the average two-year fixed rate at 5.59% and the average five-year at 5.63% on 2 September. Those are market-wide averages across every deposit size, so they are higher than the headline rates you will see advertised, which are aimed at people with a lot of equity. Use them to see the shape of the market, not to work out your own payment.
Two and five-year rates have nearly converged
For most of the last few years, five-year fixes were noticeably cheaper than two-year fixes. Lenders were pricing in the expectation that rates would fall, so locking you in for longer was worth a discount to them.
Four hundredths of a percentage point between them is not a discount. It is a shrug.
That tells you lenders are no longer confident enough about falling rates to pay you to commit for longer. It is the same message as the split vote at the Bank, showing up in pricing instead of minutes.
So do you fix for two years or five?
There is no general answer, which is genuinely the point rather than me dodging it. When the two rates are this close, the decision stops being about price and starts being about your life.
A shorter fix tends to suit you if:
You think you might move within a couple of years You are expecting your income or circumstances to change * You want to be able to react if rates do come down
A longer fix tends to suit you if:
You want certainty about your payments more than you want optionality Moving is not on the cards * A payment rise would genuinely hurt, so removing that risk is worth something
When five-year money was clearly cheaper, there was a price argument to weigh against all of that. At the moment there mostly is not, so the question is simply which risk you would rather carry.
# Watch the fees, not just the rate #
With headline rates bunched this close together, product fees do more of the work in deciding which deal is actually cheapest for you.
A lower rate with a large arrangement fee can easily cost more overall than a slightly higher rate with no fee, particularly on a smaller loan where the fee is spread over less borrowing. On a big loan the maths often flips the other way.
This is the least glamorous part of choosing a mortgage and it is frequently where the real money is. Comparing rate alone will mislead you.
# What would actually move rates from here #
Fixed pricing follows expectations, so the things to watch are the things that change expectations:
Inflation, which is back around 2.9% and heading in the wrong direction for cuts Wage growth, which feeds into inflation * What the Bank signals on 17 September and after, as much as what it does
None of those is likely to produce a dramatic move quickly. The era of rates lurching about week to week is behind us, and that stability is worth something even at these levels.
# The plain version #
Average two-year and five-year fixes are within a whisker of each other That means lenders are no longer betting confidently on cuts Choose your fix length on your circumstances, not on a price gap that has mostly gone Compare the total cost including fees, not the headline rate
Averages are a market temperature, not a quote. What you can actually get depends on your deposit or equity, your income, your credit history and the property itself.
If you want to know what is genuinely available to you rather than what the averages say, get in touch and I will look at it properly.
Average rates from Moneyfacts as at 2 September 2026. Inflation from the Office for National Statistics.
As a mortgage is secured against your home, it could be repossessed if you do not keep up with your mortgage payments