Almost everyone plans to purchase a house sooner or later. For those who want to purchase their house early in their professional career, affordability of the home loan can be a serious issue. Your salary grows over a period of time. Your non-discretionary expenses such as rent, groceries, utility bills, school fees for kids etc.… Continue Reading
Ministry of Finance and EPFO have been on overdrive to ease partial withdrawal rules from EPF. With “Housing for All by 2022” in mind, there has been significant relaxation in EPF partial withdrawal rules if you want to withdraw to acquire a house. No Need for Multiple Claim Forms In a press release dated February… Continue Reading
I do not think there will ever be a crisp answer to this question. First, when the “right property” comes along, you will convince yourself to stretch your budget and go for a larger home loan. So, all the calculations and discussion on this topic may be futile to some extent. Well, nothing wrong in… Continue Reading
Refinancing a loan simply means availing a loan from a new lender to pay off an existing one. You approach a new lender for loan refinancing/balance transfer. The new lender sanctions the loan and settles your loan outstanding with the existing lender. Subsequently, your obligation with the existing lender terminates and a new repayment obligation… Continue Reading
[pullquote]A floating rate loan is offered at a spread over the benchmark. MCLR and Base Rate are benchmarks. Loan is given at MCLR (or Base Rate) + Spread.[/pullquote] I have discussed the question of whether you should switch your home loan from Base Rate to MCLR in an earlier post. Most of us focus only… Continue Reading
Most salaried employees get their annual bonuses in the first quarter of the financial year. Many of us plan to spend it way before we actually receive the bonus. You have to keep up with the commitments that you made to your kids, your spouse, your siblings or your parents. You may have an eye on… Continue Reading
In our parents’ generation, many had to wait almost till retirement to own a house. Now, with rising salaries and easy availability of home loans, you do not need to wait till your late 40s and 50s to purchase a house. Many want to take it to the other extreme and want to purchase a… Continue Reading
Your close friend has been planning to buy a house for a long time. However, when he approached the bank to apply for a home loan, bank insisted to getting someone to sign as a guarantor for the loan. Lenders can ask for a financial guarantor if the credit history is weak or repayment ability of… Continue Reading
To promote affordable housing, the Government had launched Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (PMAY) in 2015. Under PMAY, among other schemes, Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and Low Income Group (LIG) were to be given interest rate subsidy on their housing loans. The interest subsidy was to be provided under Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) under PMAY. EWS… Continue Reading
This year’s Union Budget brought a few positives in form of lower tax slab rate for tax slab Rs 2.5 lacs-Rs 5 lacs and reduction in holding period for long term capital gains for real estate from 3 years to 2 years. But there was a major shock for real estate investors. Set off of… Continue Reading