Dont pay to the owner. Pay to your lawyer who will be the stakeholder. You need a lawyer (SPA lawyer) for the transaction anyway. The owner can agree to it or have his own lawyer that will liase with your lawyer.

You can pay booking fees of 3%, but this is also to be paid to the lawyer.

The key to mortgage is that the bank would be given the power of attorney over the property. That's why the rates are very low.

Definitely, but I have to warn you neither bankers nor brokers really know how the credit calculation is done - it is very subjective and kept in secret from us. We can speak based on experience, but nothing definitive as the bank's credit department can change their SOP without informing us. They will let us know about the DSR table, the recognizable income, etc. but things like determining the credit score is off our table.

1. For "full-flexi" account, usually there are no fees. For semi-flexi there should be about RM10 fees. This should be in the LO

2. There are a few types of flexi accounts. One is the hybrid term + OD, for this, if you pay into the principal (the OD), your installment should be reduced until the OD is fully paid off (but the OD account remains)

2b. For normal full/semi-flexi, no, the installments would remain the same; for full-flexi CIMB for example, the principal repayment is paid into your CA/SA that is linked to the mortgage, any money deposited made into the account is considered as principal payment and would reduce the loan balance, hence reducing the payable interests. But the installment remains the same

1. Yeah, if the installment remains the same, and you have put money into the loan account (the CA/SA) or paid directly into the loan account as principal prepayment (for semi-flexi), the loan will be paid off earlier than scheduled.

2. That is right, the money parked into the CA/SA account would save you from being charged the 4.x% interests normally charged to your, for as long as the money is parked in there. This applies to full-flexi that has CA/SA linked to it like CIMB. MBB has a different setup, very difficult to answer without knowing your product type

3. You got it right yet again, people put money in FD because they want to earn interest, but saving from paying interest is similar to earning interest, so if your mortgage is 4.5%, and your FD is giving less than 4%, it makes sense to put money in your mortgage account

4. Careful about some full-flexi accounts though, it is not as simple as the list above. There are differences between different full-flexi products across the banks. Here's a short write-up regarding one of them:

Understanding the concept and calculation of interest capping which was adopted by some banks in Malaysia for their full-flexi mortgage products

This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Jan 20 2019, 02:00 AM

You are right. Generally:

a. for semi-flexis the banks will charge about RM10 for each withdrawal, but it has no monthly fees.

b. For full-flexi though, there would usually be monthly fees but no charges per withdrawal.

Keep in mind that the "full-flexi" term is not a protected term. Some banks, like RHB claim theirs as a "no=charge" full flexi, but it has a lot of T&C, so yeah... the devil are in the details.

Most banks would do 3rd party financing. Either SPA 2 names, LA 1 name or SPA 1 name, LA 2 names. It used to be that only a select few banks would do it, but now most would do

In the past, OCBC even allow completely-3rd party financing, where names on the SPA and LA are completely different. But now no more

Most important for ALL the banks would be for them to be able to tally your salary net pay (as per in your payslips) with the bank statement. So you shoul give the account statement where the salary is credited into, and the amount has to be EXACT down to the cent.

Emergency funds and/or savings are just used for mitigation, in the case your DSR burst a little. For CIMB they may want to see that you have about 10% of the house price as cash, if you are buying subsale.

It depends on the bank, best to check the LO. Reson being, even for the same bank, there would be differences between islamic and conventional loans.

For example, if I got the bank name correctly:

1. for CIMB Islamic the installments start after the first disbursement, that is the disbursement to the vendor's bank to settle his balance

2. For CIMB conventional, the installments start only after the FULL disbursement, that is the disbursement to the owner in "cash"

I may have gotten the name of the bank wrong, but there definite differences between LOs even from the same banks, let alone different banks. Best to check the LO and call the bank's CS.

This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Apr 9 2019, 12:50 PM

Refinancing is one of them. But refinancing:

1. reduces the rate to the level of the market rate only
2. has costs associated with it

So you may want to stay put with the current financing

is this subsale or underconstruction?

1. If it is the former, generally go for HLBB. reason being with subsale the total disbursement happens upfront in one go (2 disbursements, one for the settlement of the vendor's bank, and another disbursement as cash to the vendor). You would save so much, there are ways to calculate this which I will cover after finding out if this is subsale/refinance or underconstruction

2. if this is underconstructions... given that the rates are the same after 2 years at 4.5%, and the rate discount in the first 2 years for HLBB, it may be better to go fo rthi sbank anyway.

3. The formula to calculate daily-rest interest (and savings from this interest) is:

Interest incurred: daily-loan-balance x interest rate / 365

Interest saved: amount-of-capital-parked x interest rate / 365

The best way to save on a daily basis is to get a full-flexi loan, that is a loan that you are provided with a savings account linked to the loan account. This way you can even have your salary be deposited into the loan account and whatever amount that you have not withdrawn can be used to save the interest payable. There are a few loan packages like this, but I am not sure which one you got from RHB. RHB bankers are known to claim that their loan package is a "fee-less" full-flexi account, but from my understanding it is rather inaccurate.

The term full-flexi is not a protected term under Malaysian laws, so anyone and any organizations can use the term to describe their products however they want.

The HLBB is more akin to a semi-flexi.

CIMB has a full-flexi loan package, but you need to balance it with the interest rates; plus there are full-flexi fees associated with it

If it is temporarily (meaning you will put the money for a few days or weeks, before withdrawing them), you are better off with full-flexi, although there are cons associated to them as mentioned above. Going at this with semi-flexi would eat up your savings as there are withdrawal fees associated with that

Generally, those who need full-flexi are business owners that deal with cash, who would need to pay their creditors in about 3 months time from the stock received, so the time factor is used to save from interests. For salary earners, full flexi do not sound too interesting a lthough this is a matter of opinions.

This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Apr 11 2019, 12:14 AM

1. 85% margin, of the purchase price OR valuation, whicever is lower

2. Depends on the bank. But why apply renovation loan when you can apply construction loan?

If it is land, then the accompanying loan would be loan would be construction loan. The margin of financing would be 90% for the total land + quotation for the construction. The quotation have to come from a qualified contractor (2 years in the business, etc.) OR come with architect's approval OR majlis perbandaran approval

Okay this one is a little advanced for me. I have only submitted and got approvals for construction loan on empty lots of land.

Insurance agent,

Construction loan is considered as normal residential loan. 90% margin is applicable, just like a normal residential purchase. With better experience you would know that there are developers who sell land + design of bungalow; all they need is the funding, and this can be had from the banks as land + construction loan.


This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Apr 13 2019, 10:54 PM

The lowest you are looking at is 4.41%, but it depends on the loan amount. But at only 0.3% difference it may not be worth it unless you are looking to cash-out and reinvest the cash elsewhere

at 4.71%, it is not really recommended to refinance. It keeps increasing due to the country's economu


4.41% is the best rate a bank other than OCBC can provide. But brokers/insurance-agent do not "sell" their services based on interest rates alone, but through service. At 0.21%... you need about 10 years to recoup the moving costs alone.

So I wold not recommend refinancing just to reduce your rate.

No need to refinance. Just let it finish.

Unless you really want to cash out, then we can talk. Refinancing to reinvast the cash out is a valid strategy. But I am not about to discuss it here at great lengths, at least not now.

it is free, just give them a call. If you are not planning to refinance, calling them to get lower rates and a new lock-in period should be OK right?

You dont know what the bank will or wont do. Calling them and asking them to consider should not cost you anything. Even accepting the new rate will not cost you anything (no refinance, no valuation, no legal fees, no stamp duty involved)

the rates are quoted like this: BR + [spread]

or if your loan is older, then it is quoted as: BLR - [spread]

All you have to look is to get a better quotation. Even if you stay with the current bank's offer, and if the BLR or BR increases, you would still have to pay more, than if you had taken the revised rate

1. Nope, from what I can tell, the advanced payment has reduced the loan balance used to calculate the interests (profit paid) .

a. based on the profit paid on 1st July (for June interest accrued of 30 days) it is RM1,836

b. based on the profit paid on 1st December (for November interest accrued of 30 days) it is RM1,518

Difference is RM318

I noticed there was about RM80k worth of advanced payment made between the 2 dates I mentioned above in (1) and (2)

Assumption: interest rate is 4.5%

RM80,000 x 4.50% p.a. / 12 = RM300/m

Which is about the same as the difference between the profit paid for the two dates above.

Congratulations.

Try looking at it this way, by calculating the "savings" vs the costs: Each time you refinance, you would incur about 2% moving cost - legal fees, stamp duty, valuation. You interest rates are charged on a daily basis, but quoted per annum (p.a.).

So if you find out the difference between the best rate approvable vs. your current interest rate charged by your bank, and compare it to the 2% mentioned earlier, you can find out how many years it would take for you to start "breaking even" with the moving costs.

For example: the best rate approvable is 4.5%, you are being charged 4.9% with your current bank. Difference is 0.4%. Moving cost is 2%, so it takes 5 years for you to break even, and you would start saving money beyond that.

This is a very gross way of calculating it, but it should give you a guideline whether to proceed or otherwise.

There are those who are paying more than 6% interests, and refinancing to get better rates would definitely help.

Best reason to refinance is to unlock the value of the property, so you can reinvest the cash-out into other things

This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Apr 22 2019, 08:53 AM