When you are making comparison between home loans, you will seldom find that it will be a straight forward decision based on the lowest mortgage interest rates you are being offered.
The mortgage market in territories like Singapore is so competitive that you will find banks and lenders offering Singapore home loan features that add value to what they are offering to home buyers and owners. Although mortgage loan features can sometimes distract the home buyer or owner from the home loan rates, they can also be a crucial factor determining your decision.
Here are 3 of the most common mortgage loan features that you will come across when choosing and making comparison between mortgage loans.
1. Free Fire Insurance
If your property is mortgaged, you are required to purchase fire insurance for the property. But you do not necessarily have to buy it from the lending bank itself or from an insurer that the financial institution is recommending. Fire insurance premium and how much it covers will depend on your property type, built-up area, location, etc.
Similar to general insurance, there can be quite a few options that you can choose from including excess required and coverage limit among others. Should you decide to accept the free fire insurance from the lender, your fire insurance customization options can be very limited.
So how much the fire insurance will benefit you depends on what exactly has the lender included in their free fire insurance. You might want to think hard before accepting a mortgage loan with premium mortgage rates just to obtain the free fire insurance. Finally, do not confuse home contents insurance for fire insurance on your property.
2. Free conversions
Because of recent economic setbacks, you really cannot tell what can happen next in the global marketplace. To alleviate the uncertainty of whether you have taken a risk when you have chosen a suitable mortgage loan, banks might offer you free conversions of your type of loan structure.
This feature allows you the flexibility to switch from a floating rate mortgage to a fixed rate mortgage, and also the other way around. However, should the time come when you wish to exercise the conversions, you may be limited to what are the available conversion options from the particular lender at that point in time.
The parameters of conversion depends from bank to bank. Depending on how a lender have structured their conversions, you may have the option of changing between loan structures, or even between different benchmark interest rate indexes.
3. Lock in Period
Probably the biggest dilemma of home buyers and owners when choosing between mortgage loans is in making a decision on the lock in period. The concept is simple. If you are to redeem your loan within the lock in period, you will be charged a penalty fee. Whereas, you are free to redeem the loan without incurring penalties if you are not within a lock in period of a loan.
When you are being offered a knockdown rate for your loan, you can expect lender to want a lock in period on the mortgage loan. This means that you can generally obtain lower mortgage interest rates if you are agreeable to a lock in period.
If you have no intention of redeeming your home loan within the next few years, a lock in period is really irrelevant if it is only 2 years or 3 years. You might as well accept an attractive interest rate in exchange of your commitment to a lock in period.
A mortgage can be a complicated undertaking to understand. It can also be especially confusing for home buyers who are choosing between mortgage loans for the first time. It will be wise to do your home work before accepting one.