looking for home loan for my RM300k DSL in BM, Penang...
stumble upon this ING site with fixed home loan rate at 4.84 and 4.99 over the entire loan period
is it a good deal or what do u think of it...
pls comment..
thank u

That's a good deal anyway..mine was BLR-2.3 (for 3 years) and BLR-2.4 (for remaining years)..
That offer is from OCBC, but dunno whether they still have this promotion or not..

You might want to ask about how much insurance they want to you buy..
If you want not insured at the moment, then it's fine...
If you already insured, do check if you are over insured or not if you want to take up the extra insurance.

Hi aslahuddin, your OCBC loan is full-flexi or semi-flexi?

the BLR is unlikely to to up....
even if it does go up also not very much....
by fixing your rate to lost the flexibility to fluctuate along with the real situation....
for myself, i wont take up this plan....

i am quite confuse also...
the BLR is at its lowest point now, majority banks now offer BLR-1.8-1.9...
so it's around 3.7%...
if it does go up 1.5%, it'll be 5.2 already..

ING has very rigid policies in terms of life insurance. You have no choice but to take up their policies in conjuction with your home loan application. I do not like this inflexibility.

Secondly, their homeloans are not full flexi. I cannot deposit and withdraw excess funds at my full convenience.

i think mine is full-flexi..

if you plan to hold the property just less than or around five year, this may not seem a good deal. but in the long run, it will benefit you when BLR goes above 4.99+2.2 = 7.1

hi aslahuddin,

r u currently serving your loan? do you need to write letter to OCBC if want to withdraw money from the account in case of emergency? or you can withdraw anytime as you like without informing them?

wow.. you are indeed getting a very good offer.

most uncompleted property get BLR-2.2 and completed property BLR-1.8.

How do you manage to get the package?

It should be non-ZMC right?

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Added on December 31, 2009, 8:29 pmOCBC.. very interested...

This post has been edited by epalbee3: Dec 31 2009, 08:29 PM

I almost sign the contract today for the fix rate, according t one of the book . If we are looking for own stay/Rented then fix rate is good !! ???
If purely investment better get a BLR -X....and lesser lock in period..

Anyhow this ING one got lockin period but early settlement is w/o penanty i wonder how can it possible since both condition is conflict each other..

can anyone please share why is fix rate good for own stay and BLR -X is better for investment? sorry newbie here

Fixed rate keep you free from worry about the BLR as it may fluctuate. It also give you a fixed figure about your installment so that you can have your financial planning more easy. It also can guarantee your loan can be settle in the fixed time when you taken up the loan because the interest and installment is fixed.

For long term and those ppl hate(maybe) go to bank often or monitor their loan loan status or balance, fixed rate is one of the good choice. Just take the fixed rate loan and pay the fixed amount of installment for 30years then get your house confirm. No need to worry economic down or up.

But if you think you might refinance in future or before the loan settle, or sell off the property before you settle the loan, then fixed rate loan might not be a good option to you. As you can calculate, if you take fixed rate loan, your interest rate will be 1.X% higher compare to BLR base loan. For a RM300k @ 30years loan, you already paid extra about RM3k+ each year for the first 10+years. (compare using current rate, i dunno future BLR rate, so can't comment or compare)

And also, fixed rate loan didn't offer the flexibility like flexi loan that can help save the loan interest by a lot if you know how to utilize flexi loan.
This is one of the main reason why BLR base loan so attractive.

And those fixed rate loan offer by insurance company will compulsory you to take up their insurance plan if you want to get their fixed rate loan. If you intend to get one, then it's not a problem. But for some people who not interested for extra protection or insurance, why pay more for something they don't need?

So pros and cons, which so you prefer? it's totally up to you.

This post has been edited by onnying88: Jan 1 2010, 11:41 PM

very good info thx

thanks onnying88 for the patience to explain, can you please elaborate more on the above line?

if you have lots of cash, let's say equal or more than the amount you borrowed and dump into the account, you will not pay a cent as interest, so basically, BLR or not is out of equation already..
As this loan type, the interest is calculated on daily basis, you can always put in some money even for a day/week to save some interest charge..

The likelihood of BLR going down is high.

i see, understood. but that is an extreme case, if lets say i have extra 50k, it's it better to put it in to save interest or use the 50k to invest in somewhere else?

jasonhanjk, mind to justify your statement?

don't just look at the rate.. look at the entire carrying cost. rates don't tell you everything..

besides, a higher rate don't necessarily means it's a bad deal.. you're paying more and you'll end up paying faster on your capital as well..

the banks don't take 100% of your monthly housing installment as their profit.. (they have something called 'profit ratio').. a higher blr can also mean, faster repayment of your housing loan (provided you have the sufficient cashflow to meet that payment)

when insurance companies offer housing loan.. it's tricky.. i like to think that they're basically going to securitize your mortgage and at the same time cross-selling their expensive insurance plan to you as compulsory..

so, look at your carrying cost! not just the superficial blr rate..

pardon me for my ignorance, what is 'profit ratio'? how could a higher blr could make my repayment faster? is this only applicable to flexi loan?

You may refer my previous post about flexi loan HERE

let's look at it from a different angle..

let's say you're paying a monthly housing loan installment of $1,000 and at 5% rate.. assuming that you know the answer, how would you think the other side of the equation would look like?

$1,000 (installment) = a + b

what would 'a' and 'b' be?

Do you mean so a=interest and b=principle ? Or somethings else?
Well,we can easily know the ratio by using the loan amortize table.

We all know that higher interest = more money you have to pay.
So how does high interest help to get faster repayment of your housing loan?
You mean we pay more because of higher interest so repayment also faster???

This post has been edited by onnying88: Jan 3 2010, 06:59 PM

yes.. correct.. basically the bank can't continue to profit in all your monthly installment payment throughout the loan tenure.. thus you get a declining balance on both the "a" side and "b" side on an amortization sheet/table..

it's not so clear cut however, to simply spot the bank's profit ratio from the amortization table.. it's tied to their(bank's) loan cost to their borrowers..

if you've followed the news closely.. there was a recent hike in lending rates(not blr) by the bank in unison as it's cutting into their ideal risk/profit comfort range.. the claim was that, the bank won't be able to break-even/recoup until the 5th year on a given loan..(they hope to keep it in 3 years.. this has something to do with your lock-in period as well.. so loans that don't have lock in periods will have a very high profit-ratio for the banks, vice versa)

the ratio also tells how quickly the bank vacuum their profit off your monthly payments until they reached predetermined level.. there was once a website(local) that published all the banks profit-ratio at their housing loan offering and that's how i learnt about it..

anyhow.. a higher blr will only makes you pay alot more cash.. but how the cash is distributed by the "a" and "b" will still be higher than at a lower blr.. thus, in history when blr was way way above 7%... housing loan tenure has never crossed beyond the 30 years threshold.. loan tenure was much shorter then..

only at today's low blr rate environment.. you can hear tenure exceeding 30 years (b'cos your monthly payment is tiny)

so, in high blr is like.. forcing you to pay more monthly (and eventually finishing your loan quicker).. the caveat is however, it only works well if you have the additional cash.. that's also how the govt regulate additional cash in the market by raising/reducing blr..

so that cash will leave the person and goes back into the banking system.. either via loan repayment or fd deposit.

[note - i'm still trying to find that website concern.. it's a property website.. see if you can help find it?]

This post has been edited by lwb: Jan 4 2010, 02:09 AM

The way I see it, there is a few hint from the news.

One of them is the standardizing housing loan at BLR-1.8%.
BLR is indirectly controlled by the government.
If banks continue to slash rate below BLR-3% and with the BLR further reduces , it is not a healthy sign.
Banks need to profit from giving out loans, giving FD at 2% and loan at 3% is going to eat into their profit.
Possible scenario would be more layoffs.


2nd is the weak US dollar.
For Malaysia to import goods to US, we have to weaken our RM to make our goods competitive.
Again, the easiest way is to reduce the interest rate.
Using cheaper loans, more people will borrow money; resulting inflation.

This year, the price of sugar and flour had went up.
Those who already own property will expect it to rise too.

Yup, either you buy MDTA or life policy, so i would advise TS to get life policy since there will be return at the end......
MRTA is unavoidable even bank insist you to buy.

Actually i'm interested in the ING home loan with zero entry cost.....you know lah economy not good nowaday...

Anyone have experience in buying 2nd house?
First i approach the seller/owner and if reach a price agreement i pay some deposit like 2% of the selling price? and take the grant and look for ING since S&P agreement is included in the ZEC. When s&P out can apply for withdrawal from ept or wait for loan approval?

thanks

This post has been edited by PrinceCaspien: Feb 19 2010, 10:23 PM

Sorry that I do not agree with your opinion here. Who's giving you the idea higher rate means faster repayment on capital?

Take an example. I use the current rate (BLR-1.8%) to compare with the previous rate (BLR-2.4). Loan size is RM300K.
If using current rate, I have to pay monthly RM1389.35 in order to settle my loan with 30 years (assuming BLR don't change throughout the loan tenure). However, If I use previous rate, when I pay monthly RM1389.35 also, if BLR unchange I will be able to settle the loan with 27 years only.

Higher BLR means faster repayment? Definitely NO! When BLR increases, you either increase your monthly installment (in order to settle the loan within the tenure it is supposed to) or extend your loan tenure (if your monthly installment remain unchange).


The monthly installment consists of two parts, one is principal and the other is interest (Installment = Principal + Interest). Simple enough, when the installment is constant, it goes without saying that your repayment for principal part will going to be reduced when the interest charges is higher.

One more thing, when taking mortgage loan from insurance company, MRTA/MLTA is compulsory in order to offset the loan when something unfortunate happens to the borrower. However, we are not forcing the clients to take any expensive insurance plan for COMPULSORY. The clients can choose from a wide range of products. Most of the clients nowadays chose to take MLTA instead of MRTA because they know that MLTA will be a better choice for them. It's not compulsory to go for an expensive one but why got people still choose expensive product when there is a cheaper one around? It's simple, they understand that the expensive one is worth the price.

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Added on February 25, 2010, 3:13 pmIf you haven't found any representative from ING, I'm the one. You can drop a message to cheahyang_0@hotmail.com for inquiries. Thanks!

This post has been edited by gavin_lim: Feb 25 2010, 03:16 PM

I think what he meant was, higher BLR will encourage ppl to repay their loan faster, instead of investing their money else where.

hi ,

i too would like to share my input here. I was advised by a bank loan officer and he to suggest that if i were to buy the property for own stay its better to have it in fixed BLR in addition to that he mentioned that having a full or flexible loan plan is of not much use. Based on his rationalization the money you had put in for the loan why would you want to take it out again and to reload it again, plus he mentioned that there are some charges applied be it in interest form or transactional cost.

in my opinion its best to have a fixed non flexible loan i.e : in assumption that you are not going to withdraw any monies paid for the loan and you are intending to use the property for own stay. this way you can plan and manage your finances properly with out the fear of hike in BLR. With the event of you having extra cash the extra cash can be used for investments and from the gaining of these investments you can reduce your loans thus freeing up your financial commitments in the future especially after 20 years later on.

this is what i think though .

Fixed rate don't depend on BLR, only floating rate does. So there's no fixed BLR for home loan. I'm agree with the bank officer also. For most people, they may not gain much benefit from a flexi loan. A normal home buyer may not have a lot of money to dump into their flexi loan to save a big sum of interest expenses (unless those people who got a lot of savings in their fixed deposit or businessmen who have a lot of cash reserve). The interest they can save from their flexi loan may end up pay back to the bank in the form of management fee or transaction cost. Flexi loan can save your interest expenses only if you know how to utilize it.
If any one of you interest to know more about comparison of fixed rate and floating rate can drop a message to cheahyang_0@hotmail.com for inquiries. I can help you to apply for the lowest fixed rate in the market. Even if you need a floating rate loan, I can introduce you bankers from most of the banks in Malaysia so that you can find the most suitable home loan package in the shortest time. Thanks!

This post has been edited by gavin_lim: Feb 27 2010, 06:28 AM

AIA offering 4.99 for 30 years. If you wanna know more in details, pm me. I can share with you. I'm from AIA.