The base rate hasn't moved. Your buyer's mortgage has.

On 30 July 2026 the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee left the base rate at 3.75% for the fifth meeting running, voting six to three, with three members pushing for a rise to 4%. There has been no decision since. The next one lands on 17 September 2026.

The base rate has therefore not moved for months. Fixed mortgage pricing has, and it moved again in the first week of September. That gap is the whole story for anyone selling a home this autumn.

Why has my buyer's mortgage got dearer if the base rate hasn't changed?

The base rate is the interest rate the Bank of England pays commercial banks on money held with it, and it moves only when the Monetary Policy Committee votes to move it. A fixed-rate mortgage is priced off something else: what lenders expect interest rates to do over the next two or five years, and what it costs them to borrow money at a fixed price for that period.

So a lender can leave its tracker products alone and still reprice its fixed deals upward. That is what happened through the summer, and it happened again at the start of September 2026, when HSBC and NatWest both raised rates and Family Building Society pulled fixed-rate products altogether.

How much less can my buyer afford now?

A tenth of a percentage point sounds like nothing. It is not nothing to the person filling in the affordability form.

• The extra £125 a month comes out of the same salary the lender is testing. It reduces the maximum loan the buyer will be offered, not only how comfortable the payment feels.
• Buyers at the edge of their budget feel it first. That is disproportionately first-time buyers and anyone stretching to a bigger home.
• Lenders stress-test at a rate above the one being offered, so a small rise in the headline rate can move the maximum loan by more than the monthly payment suggests.
• A buyer who was approved in principle in January and is only now offering may be working with a smaller number than they think.

What changed in the first week of September?

Fixed mortgage rates are priced off swap rates, and swap rates take their cue from government borrowing costs. In early September the yield on ten-year UK gilts rose above 5%, its highest level in eighteen years, as part of a wider sell-off in government bonds.

Lenders followed within days. Moneyfacts reported on 7 September 2026 that HSBC and NatWest had both increased rates since the start of the month, and that Family Building Society had withdrawn fixed-rate deals.

Rachel Springall of Moneyfactscompare put it plainly: the pricing margins among major lenders are under pressure because of renewed volatility in the swap rate market.

A gilt yield is the return the government pays to borrow money for a set period. When it rises, the cost to a bank of guaranteeing a fixed mortgage rate for two or five years rises with it, whatever the Bank of England has decided that month.

What does a flat market mean for my asking price?

On 7 September 2026 Lloyds put the average UK house price at £298,468, down 0.2% over the month and lower than a year earlier for the first time since November 2023. Rightmove's August index had already recorded the largest August drop in asking prices since 2018, down 2.0% to £364,999.

Rightmove also cut its forecast for average prices across 2026 to somewhere between 0% and minus 2%, and reported the widest choice of homes for sale at this time of year in more than a decade. Sellers are competing for a smaller pool of buyers than a year ago.

In a flat year, the asking price has to do the work the market used to do for you.

What should I do differently this month?

• Price to today's evidence, not to what a neighbour achieved in 2024. Recent sold prices on your street are worth more than any index.
• Check where you sit regionally. In August 2026 asking prices were 1.5% higher than a year earlier across the north of England and 1.8% lower across the south, with London down 3.1%.
• Ask a buyer what rate their agreement in principle was based on and when it was issued. Anything agreed before September may have been repriced since.
• Treat a buyer with a signed-off mortgage offer as materially safer than one at the enquiry stage, and price that certainty in.
• Watch 17 September. A move either way at the next Bank of England decision will show up in what your buyer is offered, not in the base rate headline.
• Get more than one valuation before you set the number, so you can see the spread rather than one agent's opinion of it.

Is this a bad time to sell?

It is a slower and dearer time to borrow, not a closed market. Homes are still selling, and they are selling to buyers who have rechecked their numbers since September and who reward a realistic asking price. The sellers struggling are the ones priced for a market that ended some time ago.

ValuQ gives UK homeowners free, side-by-side property valuations from competing local estate agents, so you can see what several agents genuinely think your home is worth before you commit to a number or to an agency. The decision, the timing and the price stay yours.