Interest rates for property loans have inched up as property prices in many places have unusually rocketed.
Eximbank earlier this month started applying a new rate for property loans, which was up by one percentage point to 11 percent per year.
Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper quoted an employee at Eximbank’s Thu Duc branch as saying that the bank has two lending packages at 11 percent per year. If loans are fully repaid before maturity, borrowers would pay a fine equivalent to 1 percent of the repayment.
Eximbank is currently not providing any preferential credit package for the property sector or individuals seeking loans to buy houses. This rate is applicable all property loans, including loans used to build, repair and buy homes.
Borrowing demand of buyers of houses and land in districts 2, 9 and Thu Duc are on the rise. “There is an individual having sent in as many as a dozen loan applications,” the source at Eximbank told the paper.
A VietABank employee at a transaction office in District 9 was quoted by Nguoi Lao Dong as saying that the current rate of real estate loans is 12.38 percent per year. Despite such a high rate, borrowing demands are high with clients coming to the office to seek property loans every day.
A resident in District 2 was quoted by the local paper as saying that she needed to borrow around VND1 billion to buy a piece of land in District 9. However, when contacting banks, she found that interest rates had edged up.
“As the rates are higher than expected, I should be more cautious when making investment decisions. Banks no longer offer many preferential credit packages to house and land purchases and packages for the property sector with lower rates in the first 6-12 months like before,” she shared.
Regarding the valuation of homes and land for collateral in areas where land prices are soaring in HCM City, banks do not use price quotations as a reference as they now consider loan requests on a case-by-case basis. At present, as land prices in such areas have been inflated and much higher than actual value, banks’ valuation is normally half of market prices.
Some banks only make loans equivalent to 30-40 percent of the value of collateral, compared to 70-80 percent in other sectors.
According to some bankers, the interest rate hike could restrict loans from flowing into property investments.
The rising interest rates are unavoidable. As the need for property loans has soared in the past time, some banks have reached their lending limits in this segment.
An executive of a commercial bank in HCM City said banks do not offer preferential property loans as they did in the past. There is little room left for his bank to make more property loans, he added.
Nguyen Hoang Minh, deputy director of the central bank’s HCM City branch, said the central bank has several times warned banks against lending to risky sectors, including property.
The central bank has released many regulations limiting property loans to ensure credit safety. As of last March, the ratio of property loans to total outstanding loans in HCM City was 10.8-10.9 percent.
english.thesaigontimes.vn/59595/Interest-rates-for-property-loans-pick-up.html
