Home loans have been a major driver of the lending business for the three local banks, but they could also be a drag in the event of a downturn in the property market, according to global debt watcher Fitch Ratings. Fitch Ratings estimates that home mortgages and construction-related loans account for 50 per cent, or half, of the three local banks' total loan books. The latest figures from the Monetary...
Finance
Many home buyers do not fully understand the risks when they over-stretch themselves to buy their dream home. From time to time, you hear of genuine prospective buyers who face great difficulty surmounting the higher loan-to-value ratio. If they can barely overcome the first hurdle, how much more difficulty will they have in meeting mortgage payments when interest rates shoot up? The proposal by the...
Financial institutions should provide a fact sheet in a standardised format when marketing loans for residential property to consumers, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Wednesday. It has issued a consultation paper seeking feedback on what exactly the fact sheet should contain. A residential property loan is a long-term financial commitment. As the current low global interest rate...
First-time home buyers are getting lots of help these days. Lenders, like OCBC Bank, have made the language used in home mortgage-related documents simple and plain. OCBC has rewritten in plain English its documents related to securing HDB home loans. The bank secured the so-called "Crystal Mark" granted by London-based Plain English Campaign to companies that are able to effectively communicate with the...
How to shop for a housing loan under today's interest rate, housing conditions? How do you assess your package? How much should you borrow? Following the property cooling measures in January, home buyers have become more cautious in their property search. However, buying interest has remained intact given the strong economic outlook, ample liquidity and low interest rates. With the rising cost of living,...
Total bank lending in Singapore rose 17.3 per cent in February to S$334 billion from a year earlier, data released by the Monetary Authority of Singapore showed. Month-on-month lending rose 1.6 per cent - lower than the 1.8 per cent rise in January. Higher housing loans to consumers were among the big contributors to last month's rise in total bank lending. But analysts expect this segment to slow down...
Foreign banks are turning up the heat in the mortgage loan war among banks. Compared with their local counterparts, they are offering much more attractive packages. Maybank, HSBC, ANZ and CIMB Bank are some of the foreign banks offering tantalising home loan rates here. Most home loans here are pegged to the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR), which currently stands at 0.44 per cent. For the first...
Bank loans in Singapore for January rose 1.8 per cent to S$328.7 billion from the previous month. This is a 16 per cent increase compared to a year ago, according to provisional bank lending data from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. All segments recorded a rise, with the manufacturing segment posting the strongest loans growth at 2.5 per cent to S$11.2 billion from December. Housing and bridging...
As the three Singapore banks get ready to announce their financial results for the quarter ended December, investors will be looking for signs that their earnings this year will break free of the constraints of low short-term interest rates. The benchmark three-month Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (Sibor) is currently at 0.44 per cent, the lowest in more than two decades. Investors had been bearish on...
Banks are now providing a degree of flexibility when granting loans to home buyers who are moving from one home to another. They are granting loans of up to 60 per cent of the property's value first, and increasing it to 80 per cent later. The move is introduced to help property upgraders save time and money as they navigate tricky timelines created by new property financing rules first introduced last...