Category Archives: Loan / Mortgage / Finance

Housing loan rules tightened

New home sales in Singapore have shot through the roof recently. Resale prices of many popular projects have also risen from the lows early this year.

THE Government has stepped in to temper exuberance in the property market and preempt speculative bubble from forming.

With immediate effect, it will make it tougher for home buyers to borrow by disallowing interest absorption scheme and interest-only loans to prevent excessive speculation, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan announced in Parliament on Monday.

This means that banks and developers will not be allowed to offer housing loans whereby the borrower only pays the interest and defers

repayment of the principal to a later date.

Mr Mah also announced that the Government will reinstate land sales through its confirmed list system and increase the supply of sites under the “reserve list”.

Sale of state land under the confirmed list was suspended for the first half 2009 Government Land Sales (GLS) Programme to help stave off oversupply risk as the property market here was then on a downtrend.

Instead, state land was only made available under the ‘reserve’ list system for the first half of the year. Continue reading

Don’t overlook mortgage insurance

Your death could cost your family their home if you are not covered, says JASON ONG

RECENTLY, my client Mr Wong called me for mortgage insurance advice. He had just bought a semi-detached house for close to $2 million. He took a loan of $1.2 million over 15 years, and was looking for a mortgage reducing term insurance that will pay off his mortgage in case of his death or total and permanent disability (TPD) while the loan is not fully paid.

Mr Wong told me that he will never forget the time that he and his younger siblings lost their family home when his father died of a heart attack some 30 years ago, leaving his mother struggling to raise the four of them.

Certainly, he does not want this to happen to his homemaker wife and three children.

‘When I pass away, the last thing that I would want to put my family through is to also lose the roof over their heads,’ he said.

In Singapore, mortgage insurance is not made compulsory for private property owners and those who are not using CPF to pay their monthly HDB housing loan repayments. However, the Home Protection Scheme, or HPS, is mandatory for HDB/HUDC flat owners who service their mortgage loans with CPF funds.

Many private property owners baulk at mortgage insurance either because of inertia or misconception that it’s an unnecessary cost. Without mortgage insurance coverage, however, life could be a lot harder financially for the family if things go wrong. Continue reading