Banks have beaten building societies to offer the best value mortgages during 2005.
Financial research firm Defaqto said HSBC was the cheapest overall mortgage provider during the year, followed by Intelligent Finance.
But the group, which looked at the standard variable mortgage rates offered by the top 30 lenders, said Nationwide Build-ing Society came in third place, followed by building societies Skipton and Britannia.
It found that someone who took out a £50,000 interest-only standard variable mortgage with HSBC would pay £2,833.56 during the year.
This was £102.40 cheaper than if he or she had taken out the same loan with Intelligent Finance and £144.73 less than on offer at Nationwide.
"With Bank of England base rates on average higher in 2005 than in 2004, it's not surprising that typically it cost 5 per cent more to service a standard variable rate mortgage in 2005 than it did in 2004," said David Black, head of banking at Defaqto.
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