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Lender says...

Woolwich has increased its lifetime and offset tracker mortgage range by 0.2 per cent.

The lender's fixed rate mortgages have remained unchanged.

The new rates include a lifetime tracker at 5.79 per cent. The product is available up to 60 per cent loan-to-value and has a £995 application fee.

There is also a lifetime tracker available at a rate of 5.99 per cent with a maximum LTV of 70 per cent and a lifetime tracker available at 6.59 per cent with a maximum LTV of 80 per cent.

Both of these products have a £995 fee. All products have early repayment charges of 1 per cent until 31 January 2012. Woolwich has also raised the rates on its direct to consumer range of lifetime mortgage and offset trackers.

Rates start from 5.59 per cent for a lifetime tracker available up to 60 per cent LTV with a £995 application fee.

Andy Gray, head of mortgages for Woolwich, said: "We are seeing unsustainable flows of customers to Woolwich since changes by other lenders left us with some of the only competitively priced mortgages in the market.

"Last week we immediately passed on the full Bank of England base rate cut of 0.5 per cent but as a result of changes elsewhere in the market we now need to control the flow of business by making some slight increases to the rates on our tracker mortgages."

Adviser says...

Ronan Marrion, mortgage adviser for Truro-based IFA Worldwide Financial Planning, said: "Woolwich is following in the footsteps of many other lenders and are repricing their tracker rate mortgages. 

"The lifetime tracker rate is very competitive when compared with what else is openly available in the marketplace plus the fees are competitive and not too expensive.

"The 80 per cent LTV product is quite a bit more as Nationwide currently has a lifetime rate of 5.93 per cent with just a £599 fee.

"It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks and how other lenders re-price themselves in the market."

rating; 3/5 stars