Britain “is about to sustain the biggest shock to its housing market” since 2008, says Josh Mitchell in The Wall Street Journal. Average interest rates for new two- and five-year fixed mortgages have topped 6% for the first time in over a decade and have “more than doubled over the past year”. Many households are heading for a nasty shock: of the 8.4 million mortgages in Britain, “fixed interest rates expire on about 2.4 million… in the second half of this year and through next year”, according to data from UK Finance, a financial services trade association.
Mortgage rates had
