A two-year tracker at 3.96%. Barclays went there first. From 30 April 2026 the lender became the first in the current market to offer a mortgage product below 4%. The deal is available to Premier customers at up to 75% loan-to-value (LTV) on purchase (Property Industry Eye, 30 April 2026).
Run the Numbers
At 3.96% on a £150,000 mortgage (75% LTV on a £200,000 property), monthly interest is £495. That is the calculation: £150,000 × 0.0396 ÷ 12 = £495.
Compare that to the other products Barclays launched on the same day. A five-year fixed rate at 4.93% with no fee at 80% LTV comes out at £616 per month on the same £150,000 balance. The rate gap between the tracker and the five-year fix is 97 basis points (bps). Over two years that is £2,904 if rates do not move - but of course, that is the whole question with a tracker.
For remortgage customers, Barclays also launched a two-year fixed rate at 5.08% and a five-year fixed at 4.80%. Neither breaches 4%, but both represent product additions to a market that has been waiting for downward movement.
Who Actually Qualifies
The catch is eligibility. The 3.96% tracker is a Premier product. To access it you must hold a Barclays current account. You also need either a gross annual income of £75,000, or at least £100,000 in savings, eligible investments, or a combination held with the bank.
That criteria rules out most borrowers. If your income is below £75,000 and you do not hold significant assets with Barclays, the sub-4% headline is not available to you. What it signals, though, is that the lender believes rate direction allows for sub-4% pricing. Whether other lenders follow is the real question.
Nicholas Mendes of broker John Charcol said: "We may still see selective mortgage rate cuts where individual lenders want to compete, or where swap rates ease. But I would expect any reductions to be patchy rather than a broad shift across the market." (Property Industry Eye, 30 April 2026).
Will Others Follow?
Barclays launched alongside a broader round of rate changes from other lenders. Coventry Building Society cut new-business limited company BTL (buy-to-let) rates. HSBC and NatWest made cuts across both residential and BTL products on the same day (Mortgage Solutions, 29 April 2026).
That is a meaningful cluster of repricing from major lenders in a single week. It does not mean sub-4% is coming across the board. Swap rates - the wholesale borrowing costs that drive fixed-rate pricing - remain volatile. But the direction of travel is visible.
If you are coming off a fixed rate in the next three to six months, you may wish to secure a product now and monitor. Most lenders allow switches before completion if a better deal appears. The worst position is to wait for a rate that never materialises.
