As interest rates continue to rise, especially in the past few quarters, opting for a loan has become more and more difficult. According to financial services industry trends, the interest rate is only expected to rise further. In such times, the borrower needs to tighten their wallets and find out ways to reduce the impact. There are ways in which you can save a significant amount of money if only you be a little bit more vigil, well informed and proactive.
What Can You Do For Home Loans?
There could be tough times ahead for home buyers since that is usually the largest loan one has. Many banks today are charging from 8.5% to 10% which is a far cry from a few years back when interest rates were as low as 6%. With such rates, your monthly EMIs won’t be affected but your total payable interest will certainly go up and the tenure of your loan. Following are just some of the key ways in which you can tackle this situation and save more than a few bucks!
1. Increase your EMI instead of tenure
Most of the lenders will extend the loan tenure instead of increasing the EMI itself. A smart borrower should increase the EMI and look out for a tenure deduction to save from paying more than what they had planned for.
For instance, let us take a look at the example below to have a more clear understanding
As you can see, when there is a hike in interest rate and the tenure increases, you end up paying ‚184,978/- more than your actual payable. However, if you only increase the EMI amount by a meagre ‚1120/- you must pay only ‚121,294, which is much lesser than the amount you had to pay in case your tenure was increased. This is just an example and you can save depending on your requirement.
2. Pay off a goodly chunk
If you are able to, pay off the loan as much as possible to reduce your tenure. In this way, you will be saving a lot of excess money which would’ve been spent and will also relieve the mental burden. In the above example, you can pre-pay Rs 15000 and keep the EMI and tenure same, neutralizing the impact of interest rate hike. You may know that pre-payment on home loans do not elicit any charges.
3. Review how your interest rate is pegged
Over the years, RBI has issued guidelines to banks and housing finance companies to keep changing the pegging for home loan interest rates. You would have heard terms like PLR, Bank Rate and MCLR. MCLR is the latest reference for lending rate by banks, and it allows better benefits for consumers. Do ensure your home loan interest rate is now pegged to MCLR and not to Bank rate, if you have taken loan from a bank.
4. Switch your lender
As a final option you can also consider switching your lender. While changing lender could result in saving on total payable interest, you should also take into consideration other expenses such as processing charges and documentation fees. If you are saving more in Interest after the payment of a few thousands as processing fees, then that would be a good deal. However, if you are closer to the completion of your loan, it would not make much sense to peep into other schemes. While you’re at it, make sure that your credit score is not hampered or affected due to multiple inquiries.
