Dear forumers,
i read through the threads was enlightened much on the subject but i will appreciate any comments on my delima.
I approached my current bank OCBC to refinance my house and was told i can use the top up facility and need not pay any legal fee thus i did not shop around for other bank offers .
Now after my loan is approved and waitng for offer letter,the bank officer called and told me that since my loan was taken prior year 2001 , i have to pay legal fee.
She blurped something about bank negara and year 2001.
now she told me that i will still maintain prior loan account and loan balance and will continue installment as usual. And they will create a new loan account for the refinance amount.
the loan balance is RM 120 and new additional is RM 330K.

The question is what she is talking about and how much will the legal fee will be.
Since technically i am not going to another bank and the old loan amount and accounts still maintained, do i pay stamping fee and legal fee ?

Appreciate answers and questions if you want more info.

This post has been edited by ahad: Mar 29 2011, 11:24 PM

[quote=dariofoo,Mar 30 2011, 11:22 AM]
The procedure which is talking about is called 'upstamping'. Basically the existing charge will remain, but the original loan agreement with the advalorem stamp duty which you paid earlier would be upstamped for the additional sum that is advanced by the bank via the additional loan.

The letter of offer which states the additional loan which you have executed would be annexed to the original Charge document - and stamp duty for the additional amount would have to be paid. The additional stamp duty would be endorsed on the original Charge document (which would first need to be extracted from the Land Office) and resubmitted to the Land Office.

That is essentially the procedure. The question is - can you do all that by yourself and bear the risk of same? If you can, then tell the Bank that you want to do it yourself and thus, there would be no legal fees involved as there is no need to for a law firm to be appointed in this case. Whether they allow you to do so is a different story altogether.

If you can't do it on your own, you would have to appoint a firm (most likely one of their panel law firms) to do it for you. And yes, you would have to pay scaled legal fees and ad valorem stamp duty for all of this.

Perhaps you can ask them if they can factor in the legal fees into the loan, if you feel that the burden may be a bit hard to bear at the moment. The downside of that is that essentially you are paying interest upon your legal fees as well.

With regard to some blurp about bank negara and year 2001, I've no idea la chief. You can always call up Bank Negara and/or The Bar Council for further clarification if you want.


Dear Dario , appreciate your answers.Thank You.