The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is expected to hold Bank Rate at 3.75% when its decision is announced on Thursday, but calling this one a formality would be a mistake. The committee has been split for months, and the gap between the hawks and the holders has been narrowing rather than widening. For anyone with a mortgage coming up for renewal in Norfolk or Suffolk, or anyone weighing up whether now is the moment to buy, this week’s vote matters more than the headline figure suggests.
At its last meeting on 30 July, the MPC voted 6-3 to keep interest rates steady at 3.75%, with dissenting voices increasing from two to three since the last rates decision, as energy price pressures linger. The three members pushing for a rise, Megan Greene, Huw Pill and Catherine Mann, voted for a 25 basis point hike. That is not a committee that feels settled. Three dissenters out of nine is a meaningful bloc, and it tells you the argument for holding rates where they are is not as comfortable as some commentators like to suggest.
Economists still expect a hold this time. A Reuters poll of economists conducted 13-18 August found that nearly 90% of respondents, 56 of 64, expect the MPC to leave rates unchanged at 3.75% for the rest of the year. Market pricing tells a slightly less settled story. As of early September, a hold at this meeting is the most likely outcome, but there is roughly a one-in-three chance of a quarter-point rise. Inflation has not been cooperating either, having climbed back to 2.9% in recent months, which is part of why the committee has been reluctant to move in either direction. As one summary of the arithmetic put it plainly, two more votes would change the rate. That is a genuinely live meeting, not a rubber stamp.
Whatever the committee decides, the practical effect on borrowing costs will not be immediate or automatic. Fixed mortgage rates are priced off swap markets rather than Bank Rate itself, and lenders have already been adjusting in anticipation. Average 2-year fixed rates sit around 5.6% and 5-year fixes around 5.65% as at September 2026, according to Moneyfacts data, while the average standard variable rate sat at 7.13%. Those are not small numbers for a household budget, and they explain why so many buyers are approaching purchases with more caution than they might have shown three or four years ago.
For anyone with a deal expiring in the coming months, the sensible approach is the same one mortgage brokers have been repeating all year: review options early, understand where swap rates are heading, and do not assume a hold from the Bank means fixed rates will simply sit still. They rarely do.
There is a curious symmetry between what is happening nationally and what is happening in our own patch. Across the 31 areas we track in Norfolk and Suffolk, the average asking price currently stands at £673,945, and that figure has not moved at all over the past year, a flat 0.0% change. In a market where the base rate itself has been parked for months, it should perhaps not surprise us that house prices in this region have found their own kind of stasis.
What is more telling is how long properties are taking to find a buyer. The average time on market across those areas is now 267 days, the better part of nine months. That is a long time for a seller to wait, and it points to a market where buyers are being deliberate rather than desperate. The average sold subject to contract rate, at 22%, backs this up. Roughly one in five listings is progressing to an agreed sale at any given time, which is a workable but far from frenetic pace.
Put those figures together and a picture emerges of a regional market that has settled into a kind of patient equilibrium. Prices are not falling, but they are not rising either. Homes are selling, but slowly. Buyers appear to be waiting for greater certainty on borrowing costs before committing, and sellers who need to move are having to be realistic about timescales. None of this is a crisis. It is simply a market pausing for clarity, much like the Monetary Policy Committee itself.
Norfolk and Suffolk have always had their own rhythm, shaped by coastal demand, retirement buyers, and a good deal of interest from those relocating out of London and the South East. But mortgage pricing does not respect regional boundaries. A rise in Bank Rate, even an unlikely one this week, would ripple through swap markets and eventually into the fixed-rate products that most local buyers rely on. A hold, which remains the more probable outcome, offers a period of continued stability rather than active relief, since rates are already priced in around current expectations.
For sellers sitting on properties that have already been on the market for the best part of a year, the message is less about the Bank’s decision itself and more about what it signals for the months ahead. A run of holds, if the committee continues down that path through November and December, would give both buyers and lenders more confidence to plan further out. That kind of predictability tends to shorten the average time to sale over time, even if it will not happen overnight.
Buyers, meanwhile, have some leverage in a market where days on market average 267 and only 22% of listings are moving to sold subject to contract. There is room to negotiate, and sellers who understand the current pace of the market are more likely to price realistically from the outset rather than testing the water at ambitious figures.
Thursday’s decision will be scrutinised as closely for the size of any dissent as for the headline outcome. A repeat of the 6-3 split, or a narrowing of it, would tell the market more about the direction of future policy than the rate itself. For Norfolk and Suffolk, where prices have flatlined and patience has become the defining feature of the market, the real story is not whether the Bank moves this week. It is whether the coming months bring enough stability in borrowing costs to finally shift a market that has been holding its breath for the best part of a year.
