The Bank of England Just Changed How It Sells Gilts. Here Is Why Your Buy-to-Let Fix Cares.

On 17 September, the same day it held Bank Rate at 3.75%, the Bank of England quietly rewrote the rulebook for how it sells off the gilts left over from a decade of quantitative easing. The landlord trade press covered the rate hold and the closer-than-expected 6-3 vote in detail. Almost nobody covered the gilt sales reset. That's a gap worth closing, because the mechanism it touches, gilt supply feeding through to gilt yields, swap rates and ultimately your fixed buy-to-let quote, is the same one behind the rate rises many landlords have been fixing into since the summer.

What the Bank actually decided

The Bank of England built up a gilt holding of roughly £488bn through quantitative easing, buying £875bn of gilts between 2009 and 2021 to support the economy (part of a wider £895bn asset purchase programme that also included £20bn of corporate bonds, since fully unwound), with proceeds from maturing gilts reinvested throughout. It stopped reinvesting in February 2022. Active sales were announced that September but delayed to 1 November 2022 amid the market turmoil following the mini-Budget, starting at a pace of £80bn a year. That pace rose to £100bn a year from 2023, before stepping down to a £70bn-a-year target set in September 2025.

Its 17 September decision resets that approach again, splitting the remaining £488bn into three buckets:

£120bn, maturing in 2049 or later, will be held permanently. These gilts back the Bank's banknote issuance and won't be sold at all.
£222bn, due to mature naturally before the programme's mid-2030s completion date, will simply run off as they mature. No active selling needed.
£146bn, maturing between 2035 and 2049, will continue to be actively sold, planned at £20bn a year.

Including the gilts that mature naturally alongside the actively sold portion, the Bank's own figures put the average annual reduction in its holdings at around £46bn, down from the £70bn pace it had been running. The MPC approved the plan unanimously, separate from the closer 6-3 vote on Bank Rate itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the Bank of England announce about gilt sales on 17 September 2026?

Alongside holding Bank Rate at 3.75%, the Bank of England reset how it unwinds its £488bn gilt holding left over from quantitative easing. £120bn of the longest-dated gilts, maturing in 2049 or later, will be held permanently to back the banknotes in circulation and never sold. £222bn maturing before the mid-2030s will simply run off as they mature. The remaining £146bn, maturing between 2035 and 2049, will still be actively sold, at a planned pace of £20bn a year. Active sales are paused for now while the Bank consults the government on a new sale mechanism, with operational detail due by April 2027.

Does this mean buy-to-let mortgage rates will come down?

Not necessarily, and not yet. The Bank of England itself hasn't claimed this will lower yields. It's one input into a market shaped by many others, including fiscal policy, inflation expectations and global bond demand, and some of the slowdown was already priced in before the announcement. In the days after the decision, the 10-year and 30-year gilt yields were still higher than they'd been a month earlier. This changes the supply of long-dated gilts coming to market, not a guarantee about where fixed-rate buy-to-let pricing goes next.

Has the Bank of England stopped selling long-dated gilts entirely?

No. It's paused active sales while it reviews a new sale mechanism, but the plan still involves selling £146bn of gilts maturing between 2035 and 2049, at £20bn a year, once that review concludes. Only the £120bn maturing in 2049 or later is being held permanently, to back banknote issuance. Describing the whole long end as scrapped overstates what was actually decided.

Why does the Bank of England sell gilts it already owns?

Between 2009 and 2021 the Bank bought around £895bn of government bonds, or gilts, through quantitative easing (QE), to support the economy through various periods of crisis. Since 2022 it has been unwinding that stock through quantitative tightening (QT): letting some gilts mature naturally and actively selling others back into the market. Selling adds to the supply of gilts available to investors, which tends to push gilt yields up relative to where they'd otherwise sit, and buy-to-let fixed rates are priced off those yields.