Woolwich has announced it is today withdrawing all two-year fixed home loans in order to "control customer volumes".
The lenders decision to pull the two-year fixed rates comes as it nearly doubled fees on its tracker rate deals, from £595 to £995.
The move also comes as rival lender Nationwide, the UK's biggest building society, looks set to increase rates by up to half a percentage point on some of its home loans for the second time in two weeks.
Around 1.4 million homeowners in the UK are due to re-finance their mortgages this year and it was hoped that lenders would start to reduce their rates .
However, potential homeowners and people looking for new deals continue to be hit by tighter lending criteria from banks who are still feeling the effects of the US sub-prime crisis and the sharp rise in the rates on the swap market - where banks and building societies go to raise money to fund their customers' mortgages .




