Avant Money has become the latest home lender to announce plans to cut its mortgage interest rates, while it also said it will introduce a new incentive to support people who wish to move their mortgage to it.
It said its four year fixed rate mortgage will decrease to 3.6% for loan-to-values up to 80% and by 3.8% for loan-to-values of more than 80%.
All other fixed rates will decrease to between 3.7% and 3.95% depending on the fixed rate term and loan-to-value.
The new rates are due to take effect from Friday May 3.
The mortgage provider also said it will launch a new mortgage switching incentive which offers 1% of the mortgage amount in cash - for example €4,000 on a €400,000 mortgage.
Avant said there is no immediate change for its existing mortgage customers.
Any customers who have applied but not yet drawn down their mortgage will automatically get the benefit of the lower rates if they draw down from May 3, it added.
"Our fixed rates are reducing by up to 0.45% and our simplified pricing provides even better value to customers across our full range," Brian Lande, Head of Mortgages at Avant Money, said today.
It emerged today that Spanish lender Bankinter intends to use its subsidiary Avant Money as an Irish banking branch.
Today's move by Avant Money to cut its mortgage rates comes after AIB and its affiliates EBS and Haven cut their "green" mortgage rates for homes with a Building Energy Rating (BER) of B3 or better.
Earlier this week AIB also increased the cash incentive for switchers by 50% from €2,000 to €3,000.
Bank of Ireland also recently introduced a range of discounts on its fixed rates for those with BER of any kind and Permanent TSB in March announced reductions in its four year fixed rate mortgage product.
The mortgage rate cuts come as expectations grow that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates from their record highs in June.
Inflation in the euro zone is settling back towards the ECB target of 2%, giving the bank scope to begin loosening monetary policy.
However, it is anticipated that Irish banks could be slow to pass through the reductions to borrowers, because as ECB rates went up lenders here did not pass on the increases in full to many mortgage holders.
