Home loan interest rates have risen over the 15 months. When interest rates rise, the default response by the banks is usually to increase the tenure while keeping the EMI constant. If the tenure can’t be increased because of the loan tenure breaching the contracted tenure or because you don’t want to pay for a… Continue Reading
You have a home loan from HDFC? In April 2022, it was announced that HDFC will merge into HDFC Bank. You may ask, aren’t these the same? No. HDFC and HDFC Bank are different entities. HDFC is a housing finance company (HFC) and is the promoter of HDFC bank, the bank. If you are still… Continue Reading
The interest rates have been going down for over a year now. I have written many times about how banks and housing finance companies are reluctant to pass on the lower rates or move you to a more transparent interest rate regime (Base Rate to MCLR or MCLR to Repo Rate Linked loans). Even if… Continue Reading
RBI has reduced the repo rate from 4.4 percent to 4.0 per annum. If your home loan or any other loan is linked to the Repo rate, this is good news for you. RBI Repo rate has moved down sharply in the last 10-12 months. Repo Rate Reduction Date 6.25% to 6% April 4, 2019… Continue Reading
While all of us are staying at home amidst Covid 19 scare, all the expenses including the loan EMIs must still be paid. The salaried employees shouldn’t have much to worry, at least in the very short term since they will continue to get their salaries. However, a certain segment of self-employed, professionals, shopkeepers and… Continue Reading
I came across an interesting case in a business daily a few weeks back. A consumer forum bench directed ICICI Bank to pay Rs 55,000 to a borrower. Here is how this happened. The borrower signed up for a home loan of Rs 30 lacs for 10 years from ICICI Bank in 2006. The loan… Continue Reading
The bank must link all new floating rate loans to retail customers loans from October 1, 2019 to an external benchmark. The Reserve Bank notified the change in its circular dated September 4, 2019. This means MCLR will soon be history, at least for retail borrowers. Starting October 1, no new floating rate loans will… Continue Reading
SBI had introduced home loans linked to RBI Repo rates as the benchmark in July 2019. This was before the RBI mandated all fresh floating rate loans to retail borrowers from October 1, 2019 to be linked to an external benchmark. SBI had used Repo rate linked lending rate (RLLR) as the benchmark. RLLR was… Continue Reading
The Reserve Bank of India has cut Repo rate by 110 basis points since the beginning of the year (2019). However, the banks have reduced their weighted average lending rates by 29 bps. If you have a floating rate home loan, then this news is not very comforting. This is a very common grievance for… Continue Reading
In December 2018, RBI had proposed that all fresh floating rate loans from April 1, 2019 must be linked to an external benchmark. The implementation has since been deferred. It is now up to the banks to come up with products linked to an external benchmark. Citibank had launched a home loan product in the… Continue Reading