If you think that mortgage interest rates are a bit too high for you to buy or remortgage, look away now. One of the unintended consequences of the squeeze on lending by high street banks is that private banks are offering high-net-worth borrowers - those who want a loan for £1 million or more - better rates than their counterparts farther down the ladder.

In the boom, mainstream banks such as Halifax were happy to offer competitive rates to customers with millions of pounds of borrowing. However, as these lenders try to keep a tight grip on business volumes, they have limited loan sizes, or imposed higher rates on borrowers taking out mortgages to buy luxury homes. Someone wanting a loan of £7.5 million from Halifax would now pay a relatively high 5.29 per cent on a two-year fix.

The private banks have now come to the rescue of high-net-worth homeowners and are offering them deals with much lower interest rates than are available to the rest of the market.

Simon Dice, executive director of Savills, says: “High-net-worth borrowers are being given preferential treatment by the private banks. Tracker rates for those borrowing millions of pounds can be as low as 1 per cent above the Bank of England base rate at a time when best-buy deals for everyone else are about 2 per cent above base.”

The deals have encouraged a return of “gearing up” to buy homes. Mr Dice adds: “Those with enough cash to buy outright are looking at these rates and thinking that they are so low that it is worth paying half in cash, borrowing half and investing some of their cash elsewhere.”

The drawback is that to get the rate, borrowers must transfer their accounts and investments to the lending bank. Still, it's nice to feel wanted.

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers