Advantages of Housing Loans Using SIBOR Rate

Advantages of Housing Loans Using SIBOR Rate

Home loans are some of the most common types of loans people apply for in order to purchase another property or to refinance a home renovation or rehabilitation project. There are many factors to consider before choosing a housing loan such as the amount of loan, which bank or institution to apply and the interest rates available. Choosing the interest rate for your home loan is very important since this factor will determine how much you are going to pay every month to pay off your loan. That is why many home buyers and investors prefer the lowest interest rate as possible in order to obtain lower monthly payment costs. One of the most common interest rates used as benchmark by various banks in Asia is the SIBOR rate or the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate.

Aside from Singapore, many countries in Asia also use SIBOR for their home loans. The Association of Banks in Singapore or the ABS is the main institution that sets the SIBOR rate every day. Since it is one of the most common benchmarks in the industry, it is important that people especially home buyers and borrowers have sufficient knowledge about this type of interest rate. Banks and lending companies use SIBOR rate because of its good qualities. One advantage of SIBOR against other types of variable interest rates is that it is more stable compared to the SOR which is another type of benchmark used by banks and lending institutions in Asia. SOR are only ideal for short term interest rates while SIBOR rate is more ideal for long term home loans. This is because SOR pegged home loans have lower initial interest rates but are very volatile and always fluctuating while SIBOR starts a little higher but do not fluctuate rapidly.

If you don't want to take risks with home loans pegged on variable interest rates, you can consider home loans based on fixed rates. Fixed interest rates are higher than variable rates since banks and lending companies are profit-driven institutions and they operate by securing their profits and reducing possible losses. With higher fixed rates, banks can minimize risk of losing money no matter what the economic condition and performance will be. Aside from being relatively high, fixed rates are also used by banks as promotional rates which are only applied at the initial years of the housing loan. After the initial years, the interest rate will be changed to the main benchmarks such as the SIBOR rate. Using fixed rates are only ideal if you want to have better comparison among home loan options and deals available to you.

Aside from the common benchmarks and fixed rates, some banks and lending institutions offer housing loans pegged on their own derived interest rate. Banks using these kinds of interest rates usually make changes on the rates if the factors affecting the rates also changes such as the supply and demand, real estate performance and other economic factors affecting their self-determined interest rate. Compared to SIBOR rate which is publicly available and can be easily monitored every day, changes to the interest rates determined by banks are only announced by giving notice to its clients.

How To Repay Their Debts Swiftly Using Interest Rate Arbitrage

Many financial gurus advocate paying off debt immediately so that you can get to work building a savings. This strategy sounds good on the surface, but it isn't always the appropriate financial move. Racking up debt is simple when you're young, but learning how to get out of debt quickly is normally a slow and cumbersome process. Credit cards, student loans, and even your mortgage make it tricky to build up a huge savings.

The Debt Snowball

There are many types on the "debt snowball" idea. But, they all have one thing in common. The idea depends on you starting with one debt, paying off that debt, and using the freed up capital to the next debt. As you pay off debts, the amount of "free" capital you have increases, which makes it much easier to pay off each following debt. This is the "snowball" effect. It's certainly more of a "savings snowball" than a debt snowball since its your savings that's increasing, not your debt.

For instance, lets say you have these debts:

Credit card - /month

Credit card - 0/month

Personal loan - 0/month

Mortgage - 0/month

If you pay off the first credit card, then you'll have an extra to apply to the larger credit card. As soon as that credit card is paid off, you can utilize the from the first credit card and the 0 from the second credit card to the personal loan. There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, however it's not the only way to get out of debt fast. As a matter of fact, it might not even be the most efficient.

Arbitrage

Another option available is to learn how to get out of debt utilizing debt arbitrage. The idea behind debt arbitrage is that you can obtain more in your investments than what your debt costs you. So long as the money you free up is invested, you can overcome the interest rate you're being charged on the new consolidated loan. Remember, after you've refinanced your debt, you're still paying the normal monthly payments. If you have combined all of your debts into a new mortgage utilizing a cash-out refinance, as an example, then the loan will be paid off based on a set schedule, so don't fret about never paying off those credit cards.

At the same time, you'll be putting that freed up capital to work. If your new consolidated loan have an interest rate of 5 percent, and you are spending your savings at 6 percent, then you'll always earn a lot more than what your debts are costing you. In fact, if you do the math, you can earn up to 2 percentage points less than your loan interest rate in the event that your investment is tax-deferred and generating compounded rates of return. The tax-deferral as well as the compounding make up for the fact that you're loan interest rate surpasses your investment interest rate.

When your accumulated savings equals your remaining debt, you employ your savings to pay off the debt in full. Mainly because your regular monthly payments continue to lower your total outstanding debt with each monthly payment, and you're concurrently building a savings, you could retire your total debt load quicker than if you had used the "debt snowball". You can even choose to carry the debt for an extended period of time, and continue to build your savings As long as you're earning more on your investments compared to what you're paying in interest, you will always come out ahead.

The sole way to know if this arbitrage strategy will work for you is to contact a financial planner and create a financial plan. Run some numbers and see which technique of paying off your debt works best for you.