17 September 2026
The Bank of England has held its base rate at 3.75% for the sixth consecutive meeting. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 in favour, with the other three members wanting an immediate rise to 4%, as UK inflation climbed to 3.1% in August (up from 2.9% in July) against the Bank’s 2% target — driven largely by the Middle East conflict pushing up energy prices.
That’s the headline. But the more useful news for property investors sits a little further down the announcement.
The Bank just moved to take some heat out of mortgage pricing
Alongside the rate hold, the Bank paused its sell-off of the government bonds it built up after the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. It’s a technical-sounding move, but the effect is practical: that sell-off has been adding to pressure in the wider debt markets, which is part of what’s been pushing up lenders’ own funding costs — and, in turn, the fixed mortgage rates they offer.
Easing that pressure doesn’t undo the rate rises already priced into new fixed deals over the past fortnight (the average two-year fix is currently 5.83%, the average five-year 5.87%, according to Moneyfacts). But it’s a deliberate step from the Bank to calm the exact conditions that have been driving those rates up — and it’s a more direct, near-term positive for financing costs than the base rate decision itself.
Why off-plan investors are less exposed to today’s headlines anyway
A lot of coverage today is framed around whether the Bank raises rates in November. For investors buying off-plan, that timing matters less than it might for someone financing a completed purchase outright. Because off-plan purchases are paid in stages through construction rather than all at once, you’ve naturally got more runway to secure and fix a mortgage rate before completion — regardless of what the Bank decides at its next meeting or the one after. It’s one of the quieter, structural advantages of buying off-plan: you’re not racing a single decision date.
The bigger picture
The UK is currently an outlier among major economies — the US Federal Reserve raised rates on Wednesday for the first time in over three years, and the European Central Bank has raised rates twice since June — while the Bank of England has now held for six meetings running. For anyone who’s financed a purchase this year, that’s been an unusually stable backdrop to plan against compared with the volatility of recent years.
The bottom line
Today’s decision is a hold, plus a genuinely investor-positive move on the bond side that’s had far less attention than the headline rate. If a purchase or remortgage is on your radar, it’s a good prompt to talk financing through with a broker — not because the window’s closing, but because today’s announcement is a useful, current data point to plan against.
Book a free consultation with our team if you want to talk through financing options on a specific property.
