Mortgage deals aren’t as good as they seem

None of the 'best buy' mortgage deals are as cheap as they sound, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Fancy a new mortgage? Run your eyes down the best-buy tables and you might think it rather a good idea. After all, they look pretty cheap. Nationwide has just launched the cheapest ever mortgage rate for those with only a 5% deposit, at 2.5% (as part of the Help to Buy scheme). First Direct has a five-year fix at 2.49% and Tesco appears to have taken competition to an extreme with a two-year fix at 1.74%.

However, even at that price it isn't winning the rate war: Chelsea Building Society has a two-year fix for you (assuming you have a completely clean credit rating, of course) at 1.69%.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.