Monthly mortgage soars by 61%

THE monthly cost of a mortgage on an average semi-detached home has rocketed by 61 per cent in a year to £1,262 a month, official figures show.

A family buying a semi-detached property worth the national average of £286,000 would typically have needed to find £ 81 per month more to service their home loan in December compared with 12 months earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Those buying a detached property would have spent £2,0 1 on their mortgage each month, up £1,063 on an annual basis, the research reveals. Mortgage rates surged at the end of last year in response to September’s disastrous mini-Budget. In December 2021, the average interest rate on a fixed-rate mortgage was 1.59 per cent, but a year later this had risen to 5.05 per cent, the Bank of England said.

Rates have stabilised after falling from a 1 -year high in October but are still much higher than they were this time last year.

The ONS figures came as Swati Dhingra, a member of the Bank’s rate-setting monetary policy committee, warned yesterday that further rises in interest rates would ‘deepen the pain for households’ struggling to make ends meet. The Bank is widely expected to raise rates to .25 per cent later this month.