Home loan interest rates are at rock bottom

Mr. Hoang, a communications specialist, just borrowed 1,4 billion VND from a state-owned bank to buy an apartment worth more than 4 billion VND in Ho Chi Minh City. Among the preferential interest rate options from 6% offered by this bank, he decided to choose the fixed interest rate option of 7,5% for the first 3 years and 9% for the remaining time.

"Consulting with friends who borrowed from the bank and had an interest rate on the old loan of 12-14% per year, I found the current interest rate much more comfortable. Luckily at this time, I had enough cash and found a suitable house, so I decided to borrow more from the bank to buy my own house," Mr. Hoang said.

Banks are racing to launch home loan packages with interest rates of 5-6% per year

Mr. Hoang is just one of many cases who can access the current preferential interest rate loan package. Because home loans are one of the policies promoted by banks to increase credit growth in the context of common difficulties. In the first quarter of the year, many banks simultaneously launched new loan packages for individuals with medium and long-term home loans, with an interest rate of 5-6% per year, equal to or only 1% higher than a 12-month savings deposit.

This interest rate is applied during the first 6-36 month preferential period of the long-term loan and is commented by bank representatives as "unprecedentedly low in the past ten years".

With the advantage of low capital costs, foreign banks currently have the lowest home loan interest rates on the market, usually no more than 6% and fixed for the first 3 years.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hai, Ho Chi Minh City Regional Director of Shinhan Bank Vietnam, said that from the level of 9-10% per year in the last two quarters of last year, home loan interest rates in the first quarter of this year have now decreased by nearly half, about 5-6%.

This bank fixes the interest rate at 5,5% for the first 6 months of the loan. Or customers can choose the fixed interest rate option of 6% per year for a period of 36 months; fixed 7,5% per year for the first 5 years.

At state-owned banking groups such as Agribank, Vietcombank, VietinBank, and BIDV, preferential interest rates for home loans only range from 5% to 7%, slightly higher than foreign bank groups. Some other private banks such as BVBank, SHB, ACB... also participate in the cheap loan race with home loan packages with interest rates from 5-8% per year, however the period of preferential interest rates is often short. than the foreign banking group.

Table of preferential interest rates, applied during the initial period of medium and long-term home loans at some banks

*After the preferential period, the bank applies floating interest rates.

Lending interest rates are cheap in the context that banks are "red-eyed" looking for new borrowers to increase credit growth.

According to data from the State Bank, outstanding credit debt as of the end of February decreased by 2% compared to the end of last year, showing that capital is still difficult to inject into the economy. The deputy general director of a state-owned bank said that although savings interest rates continue to bottom out, people's money still flows into the banking system. This helps banks have abundant liquidity, but is also a headache when banks "have money but cannot lend".

In the current context, the Deputy General Director of this bank said that, in fact, new loan interest rates have decreased on a large scale, in all fields from production and business loans to consumer loans. However, in the context of weak demand for segments such as production and business, banks must also structure their loan portfolios and have additional programs to encourage loans for consumption, shopping, and home repair.

Besides, according to Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hai, Director of Shinhan Bank Ho Chi Minh City branch, the real estate sector receives special attention from the Government when directly related to the people's welfare needs. The Government and competent agencies are looking for measures to troubleshoot and overcome difficulties for market input factors such as projects and project investors. Reducing interest rates to support the market output of home buyers, thereby also contributing to boosting supply. "This is the golden time for people to borrow capital for the purpose of buying houses," Mr. Hai said.

In addition to the policy of attracting medium and long-term personal loans, many banks are also focusing on low-interest loan programs of only 3-5% per year for short-term loans (usually 3 months). This is also a way, according to bank leaders, to help them "run" credit growth targets in the last months of last year and the first quarter of this year, in a context where it is difficult to disburse credit when loan force in the market is weak. .

Floating interest rates have not decreased evenly

In the context of many new low-interest loan packages being launched, the Director of personal lending at a bank said there was a shift of customers from one bank to another. Borrowers who are subject to high floating interest rates switch to borrow at new banks to enjoy better preferential interest rates of 2-4% per year.

A credit officer at another private bank said that in recent times, she has done many applications for customers from other units to transfer to other banks, and at the same time, her existing borrowers also left for other banks. However, filing documents usually only applies to borrowers with large outstanding loans, good existing loan collateral, or other collateral assets.

In fact, floating interest rates on existing home loans are also cooling down by about 2-3% compared to before, but are still much higher than the mobilization level. In addition, the floating lending interest rates of some private banks are much higher than those of state-owned banks.

Currently, the floating interest rate after incentives for old borrowers of state-owned banks is around 9-10% a year, while some private banks are still anchored at over 12%.

The situation is that some private banks maintain a high difference between savings and loan interest rates, according to the Head of Consulting Department of a securities company, to have a source to offset the increased credit risk provision costs during the year. context of increasing bad debt to optimize profits.

*Floating interest rate is equal to the Base interest rate plus a margin of 2-4% depending on the bank, as of March 28.

In the telegram dated March 5, the Prime Minister assessed that the current lending interest rate has decreased but is not commensurate with the mobilization interest rate.

Experts believe that the current high anchor interest rates are from previous terms when they had high mobilization. Currently and in the near future, interest rates are in a low trend. Right from the beginning of the year, the State Bank assigned all credit limits (credit room) to banks with a growth ceiling of 15%, equivalent to about 2 million billion VND injected into the economy (more than last year). about one hundred trillion dong). This is a very large number, so management agencies will have many moves to "encourage" banks to lend more.

Particularly in the field of real estate loans, according to the observation of a leader of a 100% foreign-owned bank, loan demand has not really "warmed up" compared to before, if the number of customers shifting to foreign banks is eliminated. between banks.

“Borrowing from banks to surf or invest in real estate has become very risky in the current context, causing the motivation of real estate traders to decline. Therefore, the number of customers borrowing for real estate investment purposes has decreased sharply while the majority of current borrowers come from real housing needs. This is a good sign," the foreign bank leader said.

To make interest rates more transparent, earlier this year, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh requested that the average lending interest rate be publicized so that people and businesses can choose banks to borrow from.

The State Bank has also required credit institutions to make lending interest rates transparent on their websites. After many moves from the Government and the State Bank, banks have also begun to announce loan interest rates on their websites.

Many banks have publicized these interest rates in a transparent and detailed manner such as ACB, VIB, BIDV...

As at BIDV, this bank announced that the average lending interest rate (both individuals and businesses) is currently 6,49% per year. The difference between the average lending interest rate and the average capital mobilization interest rate is 3,12% per year.

At ACB, for individual customers, the bank announced the average lending interest rate for short terms is 8,22% and medium and long term is 9,7% per year. The average difference between deposit and loan interest rates is 4,05%.

VIB announced the average medium and long-term personal loan interest rate of 8,6% per year, the average difference between deposit and loan interest rates is 3,16%...

However, currently the way of publicizing interest rates among banks is still not synchronized. Many units only announce preferential lending interest rates but have not announced average lending interest rates, base interest rates along with floating lending interest rate ranges... Therefore, it is still very difficult for people to monitor and compare. Compare actual interest rates between banks.

Quynh Trang