A Buyer’s Guide For Housing Loan Prepayment Charges

As a holistic guide for home loan buyers, it is important to offer useful and actionable insights to them.Prepayment charges on housing loans have always been there. However, there is a greater awareness about the subject in today’s market. Therefore, explore this concept thoroughly so that you can fit this strategy into your housing loan repayment scheme profitably.

What are prepayment charges?

When you opt for a house loan, you are expected to pay a certain amount as EMIs for the next 20 to 30 years. Most borrowers can, however, save sufficient additional fundsby repaying more than this set amount. This additional repayment is known as prepayment. Since, prepayment allows home loan borrowers to repay the principal amount sooner, they can save substantial amount of interest. For most housing finance companies in India, this is not a profitable practice, as their return on investment is lower than anticipated. So, to discourage this practice, there are minor charges levied on these repayments, which are known as prepayment charges. The percentage of prepayment charges varies from one housing finance company to another, nonetheless, it is applicable in 99% of the cases.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of these charges?

There is no advantage of the prepayment charges for housing loan borrowers. You have to pay more to repay early. However, housing finance companies in India need this kind of charges to operate profitably and continue their services. So, in a way, it is an advantage that you can prepay your house loan and spare some funds that would have been spent as the interest otherwise. In financial terms, the main advantage of using the prepayment charges to prepay the loan is that these charges are way lower than the interest that you would have ended up paying eventually. So, if you are in a position to prepay, it is a great deal because, in spite of the prepayment charges, you are saving cash and lowering your account payables.

What are the current standards for prepayment charges?

Since May 2014, RBI has made an announcement that banks are not allowed to levy any prepayment or foreclosure charges on floating interest home loans. So, if you have opted for a floating interest on your home loan in India, you can prepay your loan without any prepayment charges. It is great news for people, who have access to disposable funds, which can be channelized to repay their home loans sooner than later.

So, equipped with this information, the borrowers can evaluate their finances and identify the amount of prepayment that they can make efficiently.