Mortgage rates moved twice in eight days

open for offer lets you test the market before you list. open for offer is the pre-market, the market that exists before a property is ever advertised.

In the first half of September, major lenders put their mortgage rates up twice in eight days. The trade press reported the first round on 8 September and the second on 16 September.

Between the two, the Bank of England's chief economist called publicly for a rise in Bank Rate.

In July the Bank had held it at 3.75% on a six-to-three vote, with the three wanting a rise.

Five-year swap rates, which fixed-rate mortgages are priced from, passed 4.5% in early September. That is roughly a three-year high, and it points the same way whatever the Bank does next.

House prices have been flat for about two years. In August the Lloyds index put them 0.4% below a year earlier, and the forecasts for 2026 have been revised downward all year.

What this does to the buyers of your home

A buyer's budget is a monthly payment. When rates rise, the same payment supports a smaller loan. The buyer who could have stretched to your number in January may not reach it now.

Fewer sales are completing. HMRC counted 96,710 residential transactions in July, down on a year earlier, the first annual fall of 2026.

There are still buyers. Low-deposit lending is at an eighteen-year high. They are simply more careful about the number, and the number keeps moving.

None of that is an argument against selling. It is an argument for knowing your market before you list.

The traditional way makes you decide first

A traditional listing asks you to commit before you know anything. You choose an agent, agree an asking price, and the advert goes up.

Only then do you learn what buyers think of the figure.

If the answer is lower than you hoped, the record shows it. The price cut is public. The weeks on the market are public. You can cut the price. You cannot un-list.

In a month when buyers' budgets are moving week by week, that is the wrong order.

Find out first, then decide

open for offer reverses the order. You set no asking price. Buyers can register interest in your home on its page. The queue on your home's page shows how much interest there is.

Nothing is advertised, and there is no board outside.

You decide what happens next. Nothing obliges you to answer any of it.

If the interest is there, you know before you commit to anything. If it is not, nothing public has happened, and you can wait for a better month.

There is no asking price to be seen reducing, and no days-on-market clock.

You do not have to decide to sell to find out whether the buyers are there.

If your home is in Stamford or Cambridge

The arithmetic above is the same on a Stamford terrace and a Cambridge semi.

The question this autumn is not what your home was worth in January. It is whether a buyer is there for it now.

Start with a market estimate. It is based on your home's last recorded sale, adjusted for price movement since, from HM Land Registry data, and it costs nothing.

We hold records on 14.4 million homes in England and Wales, so the estimate is there for yours whether or not you have ever spoken to us. Then test the market on it.

Get your market estimate · Test the market on your home · Get started