£283 a month: the SVR shock waiting for 1.1 million homeowners

Your two-year fix is coming up for renewal, and you've got half an idea it's "probably fine" to leave it a few weeks before you deal with it. New figures published this week say it isn't fine. If your fix lapses onto your lender's standard variable rate instead of a new deal, you're looking at roughly £283 more leaving your account every month, not once, but for as long as you stay there.

That number comes from a Compare the Market freedom of information request to the Financial Conduct Authority, published 2 September 2026, and it lands the same week the Bank of England confirmed that mortgage costs are still climbing even as fewer people are buying homes at all. Two separate data releases, one message: the cost of waiting isn't shrinking, and for the roughly one million homeowners whose two-year fixes are running out this year, that message is worth reading properly rather than skimming past.

What the Bank of England's July numbers actually show

The Bank of England's Money and Credit release for July 2026, published 1 September 2026, shows the effective interest rate on newly drawn mortgages, the actual average rate borrowers are paying once fees and product mix are stripped out, rose to 4.45% in July, up from 4.35% in June. That's the fifth consecutive monthly rise and its highest level in well over a year.

At the same time, net mortgage approvals for house purchase fell to 56,100 in July, below the six-month average of around 60,800 and the third consecutive month of weak approvals. Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills, said the rise in fixed-rate mortgage costs seen in mid-July had "prevented" improving affordability from translating into stronger activity, and that a sustained turnaround looks unlikely before the end of the year. Net mortgage borrowing fell to £4.3bn in July from £7.7bn in June, also below its six-month average.

Remortgage approvals told a different story: 34,500 in July, up slightly from 34,100 in June, holding roughly steady even as house-purchase demand cooled. Borrowers already inside the system, rather than people trying to get in, are the ones still active. Nathan Emerson, chief executive at Propertymark, pointed to the looming Autumn Budget as one reason first-time buyers in particular are holding back on major decisions until there's more economic clarity, which helps explain why purchase approvals are soft even while existing borrowers keep switching deals.

So if you're watching the housing market for a sign that mortgages are about to get cheaper, the approvals headline is the wrong number to watch. It measures other people's decisions to buy. The rate you can book today is the one that measures yours.

The £283-a-month number that should worry you if you are refixing this year

Compare the Market's analysis, based on an FOI request to the FCA and published 2 September 2026, found that 1,095,905 homeowners who took out two-year fixed mortgages in 2024 are due to come off those deals this year. That group breaks down into 122,526 first-time buyers, 111,349 home movers, 690,738 who previously stayed with their existing lender via a product transfer, and 122,832 who remortgaged with a new provider.

On the average mortgage debt in that group, £200,250, the 2024 average two-year fix rate of 4.81% works out at £1,149 a month. Refix today at the current average two-year rate of 4.79% and the payment barely moves, £1,146 a month. But let the deal lapse onto the average SVR of 7.13% instead, and the payment jumps to £1,432 a month, a rise of £283 a month, or £3,396 a year, for doing nothing.

The same pattern holds at other loan sizes, and it gets worse as the loan gets bigger. On a £200,000 repayment mortgage over 25 years, moving from today's best-buy two-year fix of 4.32% (Danske Bank, HomeOwners Alliance/Mortgage Advice Bureau, checked 1 September 2026) to the average SVR of 7.13% adds £339 a month, £4,068 a year. On a £300,000 mortgage, the same move adds £508 a month, £6,096 a year. Even refixing at the whole-market average rate of 5.52%, rather than shopping for the best-buy deal, still beats SVR by £200 a month on £200,000 and £299 a month on £300,000.

If your fix ends anywhere near either of those loan sizes this year, the gap between refixing and doing nothing isn't a rounding error. It's the difference between a manageable monthly outgoing and one that eats a real chunk of your budget from the first missed switch.

Why falling approvals don't mean falling rates

It's tempting to read "fewer people buying houses" as "cheaper mortgages coming soon." July's data says the opposite happened. Approvals measure confidence and affordability among people deciding whether to buy at all, and that confidence has been dented by Autumn Budget uncertainty and volatile mortgage pricing, according to Nick Leeming, chairman of Jackson-Stops. The effective rate measures something different: what lenders are actually charging on the loans that do complete, which tracks swap rates and funding costs more than it tracks buyer sentiment.

Those two things can and do move in opposite directions. A weak housing market doesn't automatically trigger a mortgage price war, and this year has already shown that fixed rates can jump on swap-rate volatility even when the Bank of England hasn't touched Bank Rate at all. The case for locking in a mortgage rate early, up to six months before your fix ends, gets stronger the longer rates drift upward rather than down, and the same logic applies whether you're weighing a product transfer against a full remortgage. It's also worth checking whether overpaying your existing mortgage makes more sense than a fresh product if you're only a few months from the end of your term anyway.

So if you were banking on a soft market delivering a cheaper deal by the time your fix ends, the July figures are a reason to stop waiting and start comparing rates now, not a reason to hold out longer.

What this means for you

If your current fix ends within the next six months, the maths points toward reserving a new rate now, not waiting for a reminder letter from your lender. Most lenders let you book a rate three to six months ahead and switch to a cheaper one if it appears before completion, so there's little to lose from acting early and a genuine amount to lose from acting late. Work through the remortgage prep checklist before you compare deals.

Frankly, if you're within sight of your fix ending and haven't started comparing rates, treat this month's figures as your prompt. Most people who leave it to the last minute end up on SVR for at least one payment cycle by accident rather than choice, and on a typical mortgage that single month can cost more than the arrangement fee they were trying to avoid paying in the first place. The rate you can lock in today isn't guaranteed to still be there in three months, and on this year's evidence it's more likely to have moved up than down.

If you're a first-time buyer reading the falling-approvals headline as a reason to wait for the market to turn in your favour, be careful: the same data that shows purchase approvals softening also shows the rate you'd pay on that purchase climbing, not falling. Budget uncertainty may be cooling other buyers' nerve, but it isn't cooling mortgage pricing, and a market with fewer competing buyers is not automatically a cheaper market to borrow into.