The Paper reporter Hu Zhiting
"Last year, you shouldn't have spent money on renovations, you should have used it to repay the loan in advance and then do some renovation loans." Xiaoyu, who is in Hefei, regretted the recent mortgage interest rate situation.
Xiaoyu bought his first property in Hefei at the end of 2018 and started to repay the loan in 2019 with a loan interest rate of 5.88%.
Although his loan repayment amount has also dropped slightly with the reduction of LPR, the overall magnitude is not large.
"Now the first-home loan interest rate is 1 percentage point lower than before, and the interest loss is huge." Xiaoyu said.
Compared with Hefei, Zhengzhou, Suzhou and other places have a larger loan interest rate difference.
A marketer from a local real estate company in Zhengzhou told The Paper that the loan interest rate for the first home in Zhengzhou is now around 4.25%, and the second home loan is around 5.05%. The highest interest rate was 6.37% in December last year.
But even so, sales remained sluggish.
"The house is not easy to sell now. Except for those popular projects, general projects are still not good." A person from a real estate company in Suzhou also told The Paper that the loan interest rate has dropped, but the sales of the house are not good.
At present, the first loan interest rate for the first home in Suzhou can be as low as 4.25%, and about 5.05% for the second home. The previous highest was above 6%.
Loan interest rates are falling, should I repay the loan earlier?
Since 2022, mortgage lending rates in some regions have been cut successively.
In May, the People's Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission announced to lower the lower limit of the interest rate for newly issued first-time home loans, from not lower than the loan market quotation rate (LPR) of the corresponding term to not lower than the corresponding term LPR minus 20 basis points; then another 5 years. The LPR above expectations was cut by 15 basis points from April to 4.45%.
This is also the largest reduction in LPR over a 5-year period since the establishment of the new LPR mechanism.
Since then, the first home loan interest rate in many places has been as low as 4.25%.
The above-mentioned marketer of a local real estate company in Zhengzhou said: "The benefits of the current policy are all about increasing sales, but the current sales volume can be said to have fallen off a cliff. The project I was working on sold an average of more than 100 units a month last year. Now 100 sets in three months is not bad.”
In contrast, after this round of LPR adjustment, the adjustment range of mortgage interest rates in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen is still relatively small.
According to the monitoring data of Rong 360 Digital Technology Research Institute, before May 15, 2022, the mortgage interest rates in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen will remain unchanged in first-tier cities.
The Guangzhou area continued to decline, and the average interest rate of the first and second housing loans both fell by more than 10BP.
From May 15th to May 20th, there are already nearly 20 cities where the first home loan interest rate can be as low as 4.4%.
In recent months, there have been many voices about whether to repay the loan early on some social media, and the topic of "Should I repay the mortgage early" has also been on the hot search.
A few years ago, the chairman of a listed bank said in an interview with The Paper that the loan to buy a house is determined not to be repaid early, and the money should not be repaid early.
However, with the passage of time, different from what most people thought before, "the first home should be fully borrowed and not repaid in advance". Now some people with certain funds in their hands firmly believe that repaying the loan in advance is "true fragrance".
Previously, the mortgage interest rate was low, and the investment income in the market often easily surpassed the loan interest rate. Therefore, "it is better to invest if you have spare money, and there is no need to rush to repay the loan" has become the mainstream view.
However, since 2017, the mortgage interest rate has continued to rise. Even in this case, home buyers still have high expectations for the rise in housing prices, and in some cities, it is even difficult to obtain a "house ticket".
Nowadays, many people think that repaying the loan early is a rational behavior.
Lao Zou just applied to repay most of the commercial loans in advance two months ago. His house is located in a hot spot in Pudong, Shanghai.
"I feel a little heartache that I have to pay a high interest rate for a long time, but if the interest rate is a little higher for one or two years or a short period of time, I can accept it." Lao Zou said, "When I bought a house, I was more worried. What I think more about is whether I can buy this house, not the interest rate. Besides, the house price has risen a lot in the past two years. I have funds on hand now, why not pay it back in advance? "
It can be seen that fund returns have plummeted, the stock market has fluctuated greatly, and deposit interest rates have fallen. This is the general feeling of many consumers this year.
Under the influence of many factors, for those with funds in hand, repaying the mortgage early may also become a positive benefit.
Xue Hongyan, deputy dean of Xingtu Financial Research Institute, recently wrote an article discussing whether the deposit rate should be repaid early.
Xue Hongyan believes that in the short term, whether it is favoring cash management products or repaying housing loans in advance, they are both rational behaviors and relatively easy choices.
However, focusing on the medium and long term, buying public funds at the bottom of the market is the best strategy for wealth preservation and appreciation, and it is also a truly "difficult but correct" choice.
However, if consumers want to choose to repay the loan early, they should also understand the relevant policies of the lending bank in advance.
Some banks need to pay liquidated damages for early repayment of loans, while others stipulate that liquidated damages can be waived for the corresponding years of loan repayment. Bank branches apply offline, and there is a certain approval time.
Some banks say that there has been an increase in early loan repayments this year, and they are "working hard and doing mortgage business in advance"
On the one hand, some banks said that the number of loan repayments has increased this year, and on the other hand, there are banks that want to take advantage of the current situation to do their best in the mortgage business.
In an interview with The Paper, a person from a branch of a major state-owned bank in the central region bluntly stated that the prepayment this year is indeed more than last year.
Although the LPR has been lowered, the interest rate of existing mortgage customers will not follow, and can only be partially repaid in advance by "reducing costs" by early repayment.
In the current economic environment, to stabilize the fundamentals, banks will increase credit supply, and mortgage interest rates will not rise in the short term.
A person from a large state-owned bank in the southeast coastal area told The Paper that the bank's deposits have grown rapidly recently, and many consumers who plan to buy a house are holding a wait-and-see attitude and waiting to buy a house.
At the same time, some existing customers choose to repay in advance, but the growth trend is not too obvious.
When it comes to repaying the loan in advance, Lao Zou told The Paper that when he bought a house, the amount was a little tight, and the bank staff helped a lot, so he also negotiated with the bank account manager, and the other party suggested not to adjust the repayment cycle. .
After repaying in advance, the couple's monthly provident fund can cover most of the mortgage.
In his opinion, when making a decision to buy a house, what seems rational is actually very impulsive. Many people make a number, and no one pays attention to the loan interest rate.
Even if there is only one bank with a quota and the interest rate is high, that will rush in.
But now that the market has changed, it may be calmer.
Since the beginning of this year, the continuous hot property market has cooled down rapidly, and cities where the loan interest rate once exceeded 6% have quickly returned to the "4" era.
In less than a year, the mortgage interest rate differential can reach two percentage points.
However, most views believe that there is still more room for mortgage interest rates to fall.
"We judge by ourselves that the mortgage interest rate may be as low as 3:00." A person from a city commercial bank in a sub-provincial city told The Paper that from the perspective of long-term profit, it is more reasonable to reduce the mortgage interest rate a little bit, because the financing cost of the enterprise side In the continuous decline, it is actually unfair that the personal end does not decline.
The above-mentioned person said that now Xingli is working hard and doing this business in advance, and now it is time to do more.
But the current market situation is not very good, especially the second-hand housing.
In terms of new houses, the cooperation between some leading real estate companies and banks is very standardized. In order to prevent risks, each bank has a limited proportion, so this business is not what banks want to do.
The second-hand housing market still needs to wait for the market to pick up. The salesperson does not only do housing loans, but actually does some cross-marketing. During this time, if the business is not good, then do something else.
Some of the existing loan customers are in a hurry to reduce the interest rate, and some people say that they don't understand, can't get it, and let it go.
Xiaoyu calculated an account. According to the current general first-home loan interest rate in Hefei, his monthly monthly payment can be reduced by three or four hundred yuan, which is more than ten thousand yuan in 30 years.
Now I also heard that the interest rate of the first home loan issued by the bank has fallen below 5%.
Because I bought an off-plan house, I only got the key last year, and I spent hundreds of thousands of yuan in the decoration.
If I knew that the interest rate could be reduced so much, I should have followed the recommendation of others to apply for a decoration loan, or I would have directly loaned money to a savings card.
However, in terms of products such as decoration loans, although the bank has slogans such as 0.3% monthly interest rate and 0.25% monthly rate, the converted annual interest rate of 3.6% and 3% does seem to be very low, but the principal of monthly repayment Like interest, the real interest rate is not low if you lengthen the loan term.
Real estate marketers and bankers in many places told The Paper that for people with high interest rates, they can try to find someone to ask about the remortgage business.
"There are no dead rules, as long as the relationship is in place and the money is in place." Someone said.
On August 20, 2019, after the reform and improvement of the LPR formation mechanism, the central bank authorized the National Interbank Funding Center to issue a new LPR for the first time.
At present, the actual mortgage interest rate of the lender is formed by adding points based on the LPR of the corresponding term of the last month as the pricing benchmark.
The value of the added points should meet the requirements of the national and local housing credit policies, reflect the loan risk status, and be fixed during the contract period.
That is to say, no matter how the central bank adjusts the LPR from 5 years onwards, the value added by the bank will never change.
In some cities with hot property markets, although the 5-year LPR remained at 4.65% for a long time in the first two years, under the background of city-specific policies, the value of adding points has been rising steadily.
This is the case with lending rates hovering around 6% in some cities.
However, for existing customers who have already purchased a house, once the addition point is determined, it cannot be changed. If the 5-year LPR is 4.65% and the house is purchased with a loan interest rate of 6%, no matter how the 5-year LPR is adjusted in the later period, it must be based on this basis. Plus 135 basis points.
Compared with commercial housing loans, the interest rate of provident fund loans is lower, but this also puts forward corresponding requirements on the amount of provident fund loans and the qualifications of lenders.
Xiaoyu told The Paper that his provident fund balance was low when he bought a house just after working, and if he used provident fund loans at that time, he was required to increase the down payment ratio.
Now I want to switch to provident fund or portfolio loan, but I don't know if it will work.
Some bankers in Hefei told The Paper that Hefei does not currently support "business-to-business" or "business-to-business combined loans".
Peng Mei News noticed that as early as March 2020, some homebuyers left a message on the People’s Daily Leaders’ message board saying that he bought a house in Hefei in 2015. At the beginning, he did not support the municipal direct (provincial provident fund) when he bought a house, but only supported the provincial direct. After the loan, you can apply for business-to-business transfer, but the business-to-business transfer was stopped in 2016, and I hope to coordinate Hefei City to resume the business-to-business transfer as soon as possible.
The Hefei Housing Provident Fund Management Center responded by saying that according to the "Implementation Measures for the Risk Warning Mechanism of Housing Provident Fund Fund Liquidity in Anhui Province" (Jianjin [2017] No. 49): the personal housing loan rate of housing provident fund is above 90%, and commercial business is suspended. Loans to housing provident fund loans.
As of the end of 2019, the personal loan rate in Hefei was still above 90%, and the conditions for resuming the "business-to-business" business were temporarily unavailable.
Although some people are eager to try to "cut interest rates", some people don't care about the "roller coaster" of mortgage interest rates.
Xiao Wang, who purchased a second home in Wuhan in the first half of last year, told The Paper that the interest rate for a second home at that time was 5.8%, which was not considered a high level.
Peng Mei News noticed that in the second half of 2021, the mortgage interest rate in Wuhan will increase, and the interest rate of second home loans even once exceeded 6%.
Entering 2022, Wuhan's mortgage interest rates will loosen.
As early as March this year, major banking institutions in Wuhan set the mortgage interest rate at 5.2% for the first home and 5.4% for the second home.
Subsequently, Wuhan's mortgage interest rates fell again.
However, after buying a second home, Xiao Wang did not pay attention to the trend of mortgage interest rates. He asked The Paper, can he apply for a lower second home loan interest rate?
If you can't, then don't pay attention. "I don't understand it, I can't get it right, I don't have the mind, the pressure of life is high, and the old man is not in good health to take care of. This year, my wife has a second child, so I have to let it go."
It should still be noted that among the existing loan customers, there are not only these people who stand on the "mountain" of interest rates, but also a group of people who stand at the foot of the mountain but are out of reach for the people on the top of the mountain: They bought houses earlier and enjoyed a lot of interest rate discounts. At present, the mortgage is still in the repayment period; some people have given up the fixed interest rate and chose the LPR plus or minus point. comparable".
Someone posted on social media: "I was too lazy to transfer to the provident fund, but I didn't expect it to be lower than the provident fund now."
Call for "remortgage"? Few banks explicitly conduct this type of business
Although it is difficult to directly apply to the bank to reduce the interest rate of existing mortgages, many people will recommend "remortgage", and there are many related articles on various social media.
In the surging news interview, many banks made it clear that they do not do this kind of business.
In short, a remortgage is a process of closing the loan at the previous bank and then refinancing the loan at another bank at the new loan price.
Through this operation, the previously higher loan interest rate can be reduced to enjoy the current low interest rate, thereby saving the cost of purchasing a house.
From the perspective of the banking industry as a whole, remortgage is regarded as a kind of "poaching" behavior.
This type of business, which flourished more than a decade ago, has since been shut down.
At the end of 2007, the central bank and the former CBRC jointly issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of Commercial Real Estate Credit" and supplementary notices, and held a special meeting on strengthening the management of commercial real estate credit. Jiang Dingzhi, then vice chairman of the CBRC, summed up the meeting. It is emphasized that the People's Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission should take the implementation of the spirit of the document as the focus of supervision, and strictly investigate and deal with irregularities such as fake mortgages, additional mortgages, and re-mortgage, as well as workarounds.
However, The Paper found that in the later real estate destocking task, the re-mortgage business appeared again.
In March 2016, the former Anhui Banking Regulatory Bureau pointed out in its article "Anhui Banking Regulatory Bureau Guides the Banking Industry to Support Real Estate Destocking", "The banking industry has launched mortgage loans including primary housing, secondary housing mortgage loans, and direct customer service. Personal loans, personal housing replacement loans, personal housing re-mortgage loans, etc., have achieved full coverage of housing, commercial housing, stock housing, provident funds, provident fund portfolio loans and other home purchase products."
Or because of this, under the current situation, some customers with higher stock loan interest rates also hope that re-mortgage can "reappear".
However, some people in the banking industry said in an interview with The Paper that for many banks, mortgage loans are the bulk of the business. If you are a mortgage customer of a certain bank, many of them are deeply bound customers.
Now to do remortgage, or replacement mortgage, in practice is still very little.
For existing customers, it is according to the contract. Banks have no motivation to cooperate in doing these things, and some banks have already locked some profits in advance. To carry out such operations now is a bit like "cutting meat".
Even if you want to repay the loan early, the bank will often have various requirements and restrictions to hinder you.
"Actually, in this market, the motivation for customers to choose a bank or do mortgage business is not the preferential interest rate, but whether the market is a buyer's market or a seller's market." The above-mentioned bankers pointed out that when the market is very hot , you can’t borrow money everywhere, and you want to buy a house desperately, even if the interest rate is high, you rush in.
Now the market is not good, no matter how cheap the interest rate is, even if the banks are bargaining with each other, people will not buy it, and everyone will wait and see.
In the entire mortgage market business itself, the interest rate is actually a very small factor. Mostly, you only start to make detailed accounts after you have bought a house, or you will pay special attention to this problem when your cash flow is out of order.
"
So are there any banks that carry out re-mortgage business?
The answer is maybe, but not much.
The aforementioned person from the branch of a major state-owned bank in the central region told The Paper that there may be customers who do this, and have seen real estate agents promote mortgage loans in the circle of friends, but if the bank finds out, it is generally not allowed.
The four major banks of remortgage should not have done it now, and joint-stock banks are not very clear.
In May of this year, the official WeChat account of the business department of Shaoxing Bank’s head office posted a message saying: “For our customers to enjoy more favorable mortgage rates, reduce monthly mortgage loan interest expenses, and especially launch the “re-mortgage” business.
The poster in this push shows that the mortgage interest rate after the replacement can be as low as 5.05%.
However, the business department of Shaoxing Bank has now deleted the message.
Peng Mei News recently called the consultation number given in the poster to find out whether this business is still going on, but the call was never answered.
Shaoxing Bank, which "aims to go public" in its bank profile, recently received a million-dollar fine for compliance management issues.
In May of this year, a fine disclosed by the Hangzhou Central Sub-branch of the People's Bank of China showed that Shaoxing Bank failed to fulfill the obligation of customer identification as required, failed to keep customer identity information and transaction records as required, and failed to perform large-value and suspicious transaction reports as required. Obligations, transactions with unidentified customers and other illegal acts, were fined 5.5 million yuan.
The then deputy general manager of the retail banking department of Shaoxing Bank and seven other responsible persons were fined together.
Zeng Gang, deputy director of the National Finance and Development Laboratory, told The Paper that if the previous point was too high, it would be inappropriate now. If the institution has such business as remortgage, it can indeed choose to use new lower-cost loans. Replace the original loan, but this may involve more than two banks.
For individuals, it makes sense to reduce the cost of borrowing, and if current regulations allow it, there is no problem.