No foreclosure charges on Home loans on floating rates:
It is been a common practice in terms of home loan by banks to attract new customer with cheaper rate of interest and after 6 months they will be in the pool of same increased rate of interest. Now RBI proposed to have no discrimination between new and old home loan borrowers. This will bring in good relief for exiting home loan borrowers who were caught in the hands of the bankers paying exorbitant rate of interest in their existing loan.
All Banks have abolished Prepayment penalty on Home loan if it the fund is from their own source. But now The Damodaran Committee had observed that foreclosure charges levied by banks on prepayment of home loans were resented upon by home loan borrowers across the board, especially since banks were found to be hesitant in passing on the benefits of lower interest rates to the existing borrowers in a falling interest rate scenario. As such, foreclosure charges are seen as a restrictive practice deterring the borrowers from switching over to cheaper available source.
It is felt that the removal of foreclosure charges/prepayment penalty on home loans will lead to a reduction in the discrimination between existing and new borrowers and the competition among banks will result in finer pricing of home loans with the floating rate. Though many banks have, in the recent past, voluntarily abolished the pre-payment penalties on their floating rate home loans, there is a need for ensuring uniformity across the banking system in this regard. Accordingly, it is proposed:
not to permit banks to levy foreclosure charges/pre-payment penalties on home loans on a floating interest rate basis.
Detailed guidelines in this regard will be issued separately.
Extract from Monetary Policy Statement 2012-13 by Dr. D. Subbarao, RBI Governor on 17.04.2012
2 Comments
The rate at which banks borrow money from RBI now stands 8% as it was 8.50% earlier. it will help the general public to move into their dream homes.
Know more about home loan interest rates at: http://www.dialabank.com/article.cfm/articleid/547
more info on Expats
All the banks offering mortgage loans normally includes reset clauses on fixed interest rate in the home purchase loan concerned. Thus the rate that is currently applicable in respect of the loan won't be applicable at later dates.