The £660 gap: fix now or wait for 5 November?

Your fixed rate has a few months left to run, and you keep telling yourself to wait: maybe the Bank of England cuts on 5 November, maybe rates drift back down the way they did in the spring. They haven't. Since the Bank held Bank Rate at 3.75% on 17 September, the average two-year fix has crept higher, not lower, and every one of the big six lenders has repriced upward at least twice this month alone.

Wait for the 5 November decision and get no relief from it, and you could end up paying roughly £660 a year more than if you'd fixed today, for no benefit at all. Here's the actual maths, not the guesswork.

Why holding Bank Rate didn't mean holding mortgage rates

The Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 to hold Bank Rate at 3.75% on 17 September 2026, the sixth consecutive hold this year, with three members again pushing for an immediate rise to 4% (Bank of England, 17 September 2026). UK inflation ran at 3.1% in August 2026, above the 2% target, with the Bank's own minutes projecting it climbing further towards year end (ONS; Bank of England).

A hold sounds like good news for anyone hoping to fix cheaply. It hasn't worked out that way. Fixed mortgage rates track swap rates, the market's forecast of where Bank Rate is heading over the life of the deal, not the day-to-day base rate itself, and swap rates have been unsettled by the escalating Middle East conflict through September. HSBC and NatWest were among the first to reprice their fixed ranges upward from 1 September (Moneyfactscompare, via The Intermediary, 7 September 2026), and HomeOwners Alliance reported on 22 September that every one of the big six lenders had by then repriced twice since the start of the month, with some increases reaching 0.43 percentage points. Moneyfactscompare's Rachel Springall has described the pricing pressure on lenders from renewed swap-rate volatility as largely unavoidable (Moneyfactscompare, via The Intermediary, 7 September 2026).

So if you're waiting for the Bank to hand you a cheaper mortgage, you're watching the wrong mechanism: fixed-rate pricing has already moved further from the base rate than most borrowers realise, and it moved the wrong way this month.

What the market actually expects on 5 November

A Reuters poll of economists puts the odds of a hike at the 5 November meeting at only around one in eight, with most expecting Bank Rate to stay at 3.75% through the rest of 2026 (Reuters, via HomeOwners Alliance, September 2026). Bank of America expects no change for the year; Capital Economics has flagged that higher energy prices have raised the chances of an eventual rise, without calling November specifically.

Financial markets are pricing something more hawkish further out: roughly four quarter-point rises by July 2027, taking Bank Rate to around 4.75% (swaps pricing, cited by HomeOwners Alliance, September 2026). None of that changes what matters for your decision this week, which is that not a single forecaster in the poll is predicting a cut on 5 November. The one outcome that would genuinely reward waiting simply isn't on anyone's list.

So the version of "waiting for the Bank" that would actually help you, a rate cut, isn't a realistic scenario for 5 November, whatever a small rise or another hold does to sentiment.

The maths: what delay is actually costing you

On a typical £220,000 repayment mortgage over 25 years, the current best-buy two-year fix from Barclays Bank at 4.75% (60% LTV, £1,004 fee) costs £1,254 a month. The whole-market average two-year fix, 5.77% as of 24 September 2026, costs £1,387, a gap of £132 a month, or £1,589 a year, just for taking the ordinary rate instead of shopping for the best one (HomeOwners Alliance, citing Moneyfacts, 24 September 2026).

Now price the risk of waiting itself. HomeOwners Alliance reported on 22 September 2026 that big six lenders had raised fixed rates by up to 0.43 percentage points so far this month. If the best-buy rate itself moves by the same amount by the time you get round to applying, from 4.75% to 5.18%, your monthly payment on that £220,000 loan rises by £55, or £660 a year, for six weeks of hesitation that bought you nothing in return.

So if your current deal ends within the next six to nine months, the break-even question isn't whether rates might fall by 5 November, it's whether the small chance of a saving is worth the much larger, much more likely cost of rates rising further while you wait, or worse, lapsing onto that 7.13% variable rate by accident.

The free option almost nobody uses

Most lenders will let you reserve, or formally apply for, a new fixed rate three to six months before you actually need it, whether you're remortgaging or buying. Crucially, most will also let you switch to a cheaper rate from the same lender for free if one launches before your deal completes, which is the detail that makes "wait and see" and "reserve now" almost the same decision, except that reserving now protects you if rates rise and waiting doesn't. This is lender-dependent, so check the exact terms with your own lender or a whole-of-market broker, following the same logic we set out when comparing a product transfer against a full remortgage.

Reserving today's rate costs nothing extra, and it works both ways: if rates fall before completion, you switch down for free; if they rise, as they have every week since the 17 September hold, you've already dodged it. That is precisely the framework behind our lock-in-before-the-decision piece from earlier this month, and the same logic that made the post-hold rate rise we covered the following day so costly for anyone who waited.

So reserving a rate now isn't a gamble that rates won't fall further, it's a free hedge that pays off whichever way the market moves, and the only people who lose from it are the ones who don't use it.

What this means for you

The maths points toward reserving a rate now, not waiting for 5 November. If your current fix ends within the next six to nine months, contact your lender or a broker this week and reserve today's best-buy rate: at 4.75% on a two-year fix, or 4.83% on a five-year fix if you want longer certainty against further swap-rate volatility. Use the six weeks before the MPC meets to keep that reservation live and check our remortgage prep checklist for what else to line up before completion.

If, and only if, a genuinely cheaper rate appears from your own lender before you complete, switch down for free. Frankly, if you're weighing a coin-flip chance of a small rise on 5 November against a near-zero chance of a cut and rates that have already climbed £132 a month above best-buy this year, the case for sitting on your hands doesn't hold up. Most people who run these numbers end up reserving the same week they read them, not six weeks later.