It is certainly unlikely to be worth paying a penalty to opt out of a current mortgage, unless you really think rates will go to 6 or 7 per cent.”. Labour will propose “tough new measures” designed to force the unemployed back to work as part of the party’s general election manifesto, ministers announced yesterday. But someone thinking about a remortgage should only switch if the total costs still make it worthwhile.As a rule, fixed and capped rate mortgages attract higher fees than variable or tracker loans, with higher up-front administration charges and redemption penalties during the loan. These follow base rates by a fixed margin.”Tracker loans can offer some cushion against rising interest rates as they track an index, usually the Bank of England base rate,” Guy says. “This will normally be below a lender’s variable interest rate.”But although these trackers prevent lenders from exploiting rises with above-base-rate increases, they offer no protection against Bank of England rate movements.For existing home owners, the cost of switching the mortgage also needs to be set against a possible interest rate rise. As Boulger points out, anyone moving house will have to pay arrangement fees – and possibly redemption penalties – in any case. When long-term rates are low, lenders can afford to offer capped rates.

As rates rise, fewer lenders will run the risk of offering a cap, or will raise the cap to a level that looks expensive, when set against current lending rates.Robert Guy, at brokers Timothy James & Partners, favours a 5.59 per cent capped rate with Abbey. This offers protection against a worst-case scenario rate rise, but the cap is higher than a borrower could have found last year.The most attractive interest rates on offer at the moment are often through tracker mortgages. Then, borrowers could have found a fixed-rate deal at 3.85 per cent. Today the cheapest five-year mortgages on the market cost 5.2 per cent.Switching from a variable rate mortgage to a fixed rate is only likely to be worth a borrower’s while if the borrower is very pessimistic about interest rates, or is already on an expensive mortgage as the standard variable rates of some lenders are above even fixed five-year rates.The lack of capped-rate mortgages on the market also lends weight to the idea that rates will rise. Members of the committee have described the 5 to 5.5 per cent band as “neutral” to the economy, neither stimulating, nor depressing demand, making it an obvious target for policy makers. But such a rate could easily mean mortgages reaching 6.5 or even 7 per cent.Evidence to support City thinking can be found by looking at the cost of five-year, fixed-rate mortgages.

According to Ray Boulger, the senior technical manager at the mortgage broker Charcol, five-year fixed rates started to rise just as base rates reached their low last summer. For borrowers, base rate rises inevitably translate into more expensive mortgages – unless they have been fortunate to take out a fixed-rate loan – and the most recent rise may not be the whole story.City forecasters expect base rates to go up further, perhaps reaching 5 or 5.5 per cent. Anxious to lose her virginity (she does so with her sensitive Indian tutor), the teenager is determined to win a place at Berkeley, to leave Bombay and the father she feels has let her down. Mortgage borrowing reached a 10-year high in March, according to the latest figures released by the Bank of England. The rise – of 1.2 per cent to £9.3bn – was the largest ever since records began in 1994.

Relationships are beautifully observed: the favouritism in families, the verbal fencing of the Indian matron with her son’s Western lover, the parents indulging spoilt adult children.Freudenberger is not showy, and makes her impact quietly. The daughter who has inherited her mother’s depression feels as if she has lost a layer, that she is “getting even smaller, like a bar of soap” The five stories are full of such images They seem to come easily to Freudenberger Lucky girl, indeed.. The new becomes familiar and the familiar oddly new when characters glimpse “the unexpected view of something everyone in the world has seen a thousand times”. In “The Orphan”, Alice is divorcing and travels to Bangkok to break this news to her daughter and so bring her childhood to an end.Lucky Girls is a joy to read Western and Eastern sensuality combine, often chaotically.