Halifax is increasing rates by up to 12 basis points, despite Nationwide announcing price cuts yesterday.

Brokers had expected the move by Nationwide to trigger reductions by other major lenders, so today’s news from Halifax came as a surprise.

Halifax is raising first-time buyer and homemover rates by up to 12bps tomorrow, while remortgage rates and product transfer deals will climb by up to 5bps.

Yesterday, Nationwide revealed it would be cutting prices by up to 19bps on a range of products from today in response to lower swap rates.

Trinity Financial product and communications director Aaron Strutt says: “This is a surprising move from Halifax based on Nationwide’s announcement that it is lowering rates because of the drop in mortgage funding costs.

“It seemed like rates would be coming down rather than going up again, even if only by a small amount.

“Halifax is currently offering some of the cheapest two, three and five-year fixes so it must be getting lots of applications.”

Like Nationwide, specialist lender Gen H was quick to respond to a drop in swap rates, cutting prices by up to 40bps, but so far none of the biggest high street names have followed.