Tag: Housing Loan

2 Financial Quick Rules – Rule of 200 & Rule of 72

Rule of 200 & Rule of 72. Two financial quick rules, one for Mortgage Repayment Affordability Check and the other one for Investment Return Check.

The first rule to be discussed is related to mortgage loan. After practising and repeatedly making calculation for mortgage loan upon enquiry, I observed that anyone could quickly make a simple calculation base on this rule. A mortgage loan with tenure of 35 years (max) and effective interest of around 5%, the monthly instalment will be about 0.5% of the loan amount. Example, if you are about to get a loan of RM 500,000, the monthly instalment is about Rm2,500 per month. Not too sure if there’s any name for this, for easy of reference, I would like to call it as Rule of 1/200 (equivalent to 0.5%).

How can anyone do a quick check using this rule?

  • Decide on affordability of repayment prior to purchase of property. Simply divide the loan amount by 200 and that will be your monthly repayment amount. Decide whether you are comfortable with the repayment amount or not.
  • Prior to looking for a property, decide how much monthly repayment you are willing to pay. For example, if you decided to pay RM 2,000, multiply it by 200, and you will end up with RM 400,000. Since maximum loan margin for residential is 90%, you could look for a property around RM 450,000.

The Second Rule – Rule of 72. Many write up available for this Rule of 72, but many seems to have not really look into this quick reference. For me, most of the time, this will be used for estimating the viability of a investment. What does this mean?

Divide 72 with the return rate offered, that would easily estimate the time for your initial investment is doubled. I would like to use one of the simplest example, Fixed Deposit Saving. If you save RM 100,000 in a FD account with 3.6% interest rate, with the interest received added back into principal, your saving will be RM 200,000 in approximately 20 years. We get the answer 20 by dividing 72 with 3.6.

You can also use this to estimate your rate of return for investment. Example, my investment doubled in 10 years, therefore my rate of return will be approximately 7.2%.

2 simple rules for quick check. Perhaps with advancement of electronic devices, many will not find these rules helpful, I still like it the old way for quick check.

Mortgage Loan: Bi-Weekly Payment REALLY Save Your Money?

One of the hot topic last month concerning a lot of mortgage loan borrower when there was an article (by other) circulated describing how two (2) simple move could save you a lot of interest. As usual, approached by colleagues, friends, relatives, Facebook friends & etc. “How could this possible?”, “Is this true?”. As I’ve verbally explained to some and this article was meant for all. Sorry for the delay.

BiWeekly

It depends! If you are changing to Bi-Weekly mode if there’s this option (with Malaysia’s Bank), and you are making the payment according to the instalment calculated based on bi-weekly payment, you saved “peanuts”.

In order for what mentioned in the previous article to work, you need to do as what the article suggested, you pay Bi-Weekly by dividing your monthly instalment into half and pay every 2 weeks. This sounds true as one month consists of 4 weeks, but one year consist of 52 weeks which will be equivalent to 13 months. Logically this will definitely shorten your loan in term of years as you make extra payment each year. After 12 years, you have made payment for a year extra. As describe in my just previous post, understand the meaning of Daily Rest, each early or extra payment you make will definitely save you interest.

Link to my previous post : https://ethanetteh.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/understand-your-mortgage-loan-save-thousands-of-ringgit/

Secondly, you should do the bi-weekly payment correctly. If your instalment due in 1st of July and the instalment amount is RM 1,500.00, Please do not divide the instalment into half and make the payment on RM 750.00 with the balance being paid on 15th of July. If you are doing this, not only Bi-Weekly won’t save you interest but will in fact increase the amount of interest you are paying. The article actually requested you to pay your RM 750 on 15th of June.

For me, just take note of three important points here. First, most of us make instalment every month because the income basically also coming in every month, be it salary or even rental. It makes more sense to manage your instalment that way as well.

Secondly, I agree with the extra payment made each instalment in order to save on interest as this really works. (kindly refer to example in the previous post).

Thirdly, kindly utilise the Flexi-Loan and Semi-Flexi Loan account that you have applied for. Many insisted on Full Flexi-Loan but later to be found out never utilising it but paying the monthly maintenance fee. Whatever extra money placed in this Flexi-Loan account has indeed assisted to save on interest.

Any doubts? Email to ask@ethanteh.com

We have a working MS Excel Spreadsheet that could simulate effect of extra payment. Kindly drop me email if you are interested.

For convenience of all, MS Excel file is attached. : Amortization Complete Worksheet V2

Why Base Rate (BR) instead of Base Lending Rate (BLR)?

With year 2015 approaching, many were concerned about the implementation of new interest reference rate for mortgage loan; Base Rate (BR) which is replacing Base Lending Rate (BLR). Many started to worry about their existing mortgage loan and more were advised to expedite their application of mortgage loan in order to secure a “BLR Minus” package as the new package after the introduction of BR will be “BR Plus”.

BRBLR

While this is true, there’s no need for panic and we believe many were actually confused and misled by many in the industry including bank’s salesperson. BR was meant to be more transparent and let borrowers know the actual profit banks are making and more reflective of market condition from time to time.

One of the question that I loved to ask most : “Who/Which institution set the BLR?”. The most common answer that you will get is? – “Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM)”. And this is one of the most common misunderstood fact even among mortgage salespersons. In reality, since 2004, BNM removed the control of ceiling rate for BLR set by bank and also the ceiling for interest spread. This enabled bank to determine the BLR and their offered package to their client based on their finance and operating cost. (refer to: http://www.bnm.gov.my/files/publication/ar/en/2004/cp05_002_whitebox.pdf)

This led to a situation that most if not all major banks set the same BLR which doesn’t really reflect their finance cost and then compete among each other by giving “BLR Minus” package. Next question –

If Base Lending Rate (BLR) is the base, how can bank offer a “BLR Minus” package which is below their base lending rate?

The answer to this question will be the BLR isn’t really their base rate.

Eventually, this provided a perception to the public that they are getting a loan at a discounted rate. Imagine this, there are housing loans out there offered with BLR -1.7 package which brought the effective rate to 5.15% (Current BLR: 6.85%). Client would generally perceives that they are still getting discounted rate but only the discount is not as great as those getting larger loan who are offered with BLR – 2.45 (effective 4.4%). But with the introduction of BR which, let us assumed at 4%, about 0.75% above Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) and is now offered with a package of BR + 1.15 (effective 5.15%) compared to a client offered with BR + 0.4 (effective 4.4%), client will definitely started to question why his/her loan was loaded with 0.7% higher than another client.

We believe that the purpose of BNM to restructure the Lending Interest Rate system is to rectify this situation and require banks to set a BR which reflect their fund cost and operation cost. Therefore, introduction of BR should be very much welcomed and there’s no need for worries.

While with BR, the package will be “BR Plus”, the BR will not be equivalent to BLR which is 6.85% at this moment (Dec 2014). We strongly believe that the after the introduction of BR, the effective rate will still be almost the same as current BLR system.

*This article is solely based on our own opinion and for general reading purpose only.

Feel free to contact us at ask@ethanteh.com for more details or any mortgage loan enquiries.