Most news papers and other media outlets are reporting that even more lenders have joined those who have increased the price of their fixed-rate mortgages for new customers.

Abbey, Lloyds Banking Group (Northern Rock, Cheltenham & Gloucester and the Halifax, all now part of Lloyds), Woolwich (part of Barclays) and Nationwide Building Society have thus far increased the costs for new customers taking out fixed-rate mortgages. It was Nationwide which commenced this mortgage rates increase tendency last week, raising the interest rate for borrowers of all its fixed-rate home loan products by 0.86 per cent.

Most recently, the second biggest mortgage lender in the UK, Abbey, raised all of its fixed-rate property loans by a rate of between 0.25 per cent and 0.5 per cent.

BBC News reported that the rising fee of swap rates is a main reason for these increases in fixed-rate mortgage rates. It explained that swap rates “are the fixed rates at which banks and building societies borrow money from each other, for specified periods of time, to fund these particular mortgage deals”.

Nici Audhlam-Gardiner, director of mortgages for the Abbey and the Alliance & Leicester – both banks managed by the Spanish bank Santander – said: “Swap rates have increased substantially in May and June and in particular last week. Following competitor moves and further swap rate increases, it has become necessary to increase the rates on some of the deals we offer.”

Given the Bank of England’s base rate of just 0.5 per cent, fixed-rate mortgages are popular with property owners at the moment. The theory is that rates can only increase, so now seems to be a good time to fix the rate of your home mortgage repayments.