Furthermore, if they had to renew their mortgage right now, almost one in three homeowners (5.1 million people) would choose a five-year, 10-year or even a 15-year fixed rate.
Of these, most people would play it safe with a five-year fixed product - favouring that over a two-year one - however a huge 4 million more people would opt for a 15-year fix over a 10-year one.
Trackers were slightly up in terms of popularity at 12 per cent, however this is still lower than the demand for five-year fixes.
Why do people want to fix? Amongst the 8.8 million people who prefer this type of mortgage, 5.7 million (65 per cent) stated that regardless of the Bank of England base rate, they would like to know exactly what their monthly outgoings would be.
A lack of understanding of tracker mortgages amongst homeowners was also identified, with around 700,000 (8 per cent) saying that they preferred to fix because they didn’t understand tracker mortgages.
Nici Audhlam-Gardiner, head of mortgages at Abbey said: “For most of us our mortgage is the biggest financial commitment we make so it’s understandable that we want to know just how much we’re going to have to fork out each month.
“You never know what’s going to happen in the future, but at least if you’ve committed to a long term fixed deal, you know where you are going to stand with your repayments. Borrowers need to be sure however that the deal they take out is right for them and that they understand the different types of mortgages available before signing up to anything.”
