About PlainMortgage

Our mission is to make UK mortgage pricing and affordability transparent and freely accessible to every household. PlainMortgage helps first-time buyers, remortgagers, and journalists compare two-year fixes, five-year fixes, trackers, and standard variable rates, and to model what they can realistically borrow under current lender stress tests, without signups, advisor sales pitches, or commission incentives.

PlainMortgage is a UK-focused rate comparator and affordability engine. We pull the Bank of England base rate, the Bank of England's monthly quoted household mortgage rates, and monthly HM Land Registry House Price Index releases into one database, then expose them through calculators, comparison pages, and editorial explainers. We do not sell mortgages, we are not regulated as a broker, and we accept no commission from lenders. The maths is correct; the decision stays with you and an FCA-regulated adviser.

Our Data

PlainMortgage compiles three public datasets:

• Bank of England Bank Rate - the official policy rate, published within hours of every Monetary Policy Committee decision. This is the single biggest input to UK mortgage pricing.
• Bank of England quoted household interest rates - the monthly average advertised mortgage rate across UK lenders, broken down by fix period and LTV band, plus the standard variable rate. These are published monthly market averages, not best-buy headlines.
• HM Land Registry UK House Price Index - the official monthly index of UK average (mean) residential transaction prices, published with a roughly two-month reporting lag.

All three datasets are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Methodology

We apply standard repayment amortisation, lender stress-test rates (typically base rate plus one percentage point at the offer date), and the conventional 4.5× income multiple ceiling used across the UK market. No figure is editorialised: rates are quoted at the vintage shown on the page; affordability projections are formulaic, not advisory. See the methodology page for every formula, every source URL, and every refresh-cadence assumption.

Updates

The Bank Rate is updated within hours of each MPC announcement. The Bank of England's quoted household mortgage rates and the HM Land Registry House Price Index are both published monthly, and we refresh them when each new release lands. The vintage stamp at the bottom of every page is the date of the most recent ETL refresh.

Not Financial Advice

PlainMortgage is an information service. We are not an FCA-regulated mortgage broker or financial adviser, and the calculators on this site do not constitute personal financial advice. A mortgage is the largest financial commitment most households will ever make - the £150-£500 cost of independent regulated advice typically pays back many times over in product selection and avoided pitfalls. We recommend speaking with a regulated adviser before taking out a mortgage.

Not Affiliated

PlainMortgage is not affiliated with the Bank of England, HM Land Registry, the Financial Conduct Authority, or any lender. We are an independent data portal publishing public information in a more usable format.

Who Built This

PlainMortgage is an independent data-journalism publisher that compiles, verifies, and contextualises public datasets. We do not accept compensation from any lender, broker, or product provider that we cover; revenue is from display advertising and reader-supported features only.

Editorial Process

PlainMortgage operates an editorial pipeline: raw rate and house-price data are loaded from authoritative source feeds into our SQLite database, then explainer pages and calculator narratives are drafted and reviewed by our editorial process for accuracy, plain-language clarity, and consistency with the underlying figures. Numbers are never altered between source and display, only summaries and explanations pass through this continuous editorial pipeline. The methodology page documents the full source-to-publication chain.

Limitations

PlainMortgage is an information resource, not a regulated financial adviser. Several limitations apply to every page on this site, and you should keep them in mind when using any figure shown here as input to a real financial decision.

• Headline rates are indicators, not personal quotes. The average rate shown for a given LTV-band × fix-period cell is the Bank of England's monthly quoted-rate average across UK lenders. A real offer depends on your credit profile, deposit size, property type, employment status, and lender appetite. For a binding rate, get a Decision in Principle from a regulated broker or directly from a lender.
• HPI figures lag by approximately two months. The HM Land Registry House Price Index is built from completed land-registered transactions, which take 8-14 weeks from accepted offer to completion plus another 2-4 weeks to register. Leading indicators (Rightmove, Halifax) update faster but capture different parts of the cycle.
• Affordability is formulaic. Our calculator applies a stress-test rule (base rate plus one percentage point at offer) and the 4.5× LTI working ceiling. Income is an illustrative, editable figure you enter yourself, this site does not load real income data. Real lender underwriting uses richer income data than this site receives, and can diverge in either direction depending on the lender's policy.
• We are not a regulated broker. PlainMortgage does not sell mortgages, does not earn commission from any lender, and does not provide financial advice. The information here is general and educational. For a recommendation tailored to your circumstances, consult an FCA-regulated broker or independent financial adviser.
• Data can be stale or incorrect. Upstream sources occasionally publish errors or revise prior figures. We refresh the database on a documented cadence (see methodology) but cannot guarantee every figure matches the latest upstream release at every moment. Always check the source citation on the page before relying on a number.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or partnership enquiries: contact us or email hello@plainmortgage.co.uk. Data corrections are typically processed within 48 hours; legal or rights enquiries within five working days.