22-May Update — RBI has extended EMI moratorium on all term loans by another 3 months till 31-August-2020. Following RBI’s Covid-19 regulatory package, your bank may have provided you an option to not pay loan EMIs or credit card payment until May 31, 2020. As a borrower, should you opt for this? In this post, let’s… Continue Reading
Are you wary of buying an under-construction property? While under-construction properties are cheaper and offer greater potential for capital appreciation, such properties also come with an element of uncertainty. What if the builder fails to deliver the property on time? Or from what many buyers across the country have faced, the builder fails to deliver… Continue Reading
It is a new year and it is raining new home loan schemes. LIC Housing Finance has launched 2 new home loan schemes in January 2020, “Pay when you stay” and “6 EMI waiver”. In this post, let’s find out about these schemes in detail. LIC Housing Finance: Pay When You Stay Home Loan Applicable… Continue Reading
Budget 2020 gave a choice to the taxpayers and a reason to rejoice to the tax accountants. As a taxpayer, you have the following two options. Take tax deductions and continue with the old tax regime Opt for the new tax regime and don’t take tax deductions As a taxpayer, this choice seems relatively simple.… Continue Reading
The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, presented the Union Budget 2020 in the parliament yesterday. In this post, let’s look at the highlights of the Budget proposal. We will look at the proposals from personal taxation perspective only. #1 Restructuring of Income Tax Slabs, Lowering of Personal Tax Rates and a Choice There is a major… Continue Reading
Should you stay on rent or buy a house on loan? Many of us think of house rent as a waste of money. A common refrain is, “You are already paying so much rent. Why not adding some money and pay the EMI? After a few years, you will also own this house.” In my… 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
All the banks linked the new retail floating rate loans to an external benchmark from October 1, 2019. In my opinion, that makes the comparison between various home loan products easier. Most of the banks have chosen Repo rate for the external benchmark for home loans. Earlier, benchmark MCLR (Marginal cost of funds-based lending rate)… 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