home sweet home
Saturday, April 14, 2007
one among the thousand other Bangaloreans, who bought a flat in some area around the greater Bangalore area, i wanted to
spill out my many grievances and few happy moments.attracted by the smaller interest rates and bigger tax savings,
(hey the story starts one year back huh), I booked a smaller two bedroom apartment in outer ring road which is
built by some lesser known builder group,during the November 2k5. They had a neatly printed and glossy catalogue which showed the apartment in
3 D view with multi-colors in the walls (it sucks now) ,swimming pool (hey you need some gut or you should be a
kid,to bath before the windows of 90 plus houses,at least for a shy guy like me), a plush car parking area with
ample space (i think it will be difficult to park my two wheeler either in the space they have alloted) and twenty
others in the list to attract me and 90 plus other me's.At the time , when i booked the flat, they just had dig a big
hole,not for me yaar, for my block.There were six other too.and the building started growing.ok.Now i will enter the economics of this,when they
were busy building the apartments.i went for a loan with a bank which gave me an attractive offer,of a loan with
two percent interest rate.oh sorry. it's not april one and my interest rate was 7.25 percent. pretty manageable with my salary.the bank executive asked for all the details about me with supported documents and they gave a hefty booklet to me to sign in every other page.I didnt read it fully and it will take some two weeks and 4 hours to read and understand it clearly, by then the builder would find another person for my flat, who can sign those books without reading it.I didn't left another guy to overtake me.Wish,I could have.then came the D-Day for all loan applicants.the approval day.my loan got approved for 75 percent of the amount I actually needed.Then started the bargaining process and finally i had to be happy with the 90 percent of the amount,if and only if I chose accept the floating interest rate procedure.I did and I didnt see any evil with three pronged sword laughing at me.but now i think it would have. When the total amount is in double digit lacs,10 percent counts yaar and i started counting my bank balance.finally, i settled out everything.these banks have a strange concept called pre-emi's.that is the amount that goes to the bank,out for no use to us to reduce the total principal of our loan.after six months of payment, i got entitled to start paying back the loan.hey isn't something fishy over here.yup. i lost all my Pre-EMI payment for nothing and now i have started paying the equated monthly installments in which the majoooooooor part goes to the interest component of the loan and small part gets reduced from the principal.and then bank earned happily ever after. hey its a happy ending for the loaner alone.
They say everything that goes up, comes down. budget was proposed and the budget got accepted,inflation went up and came down,but the floating interest rates for the home loans are gravity defying.rates sky rocketed and reached International space station without paying 20 million dollars to Russians, just a bad joke to console myself in this grave situation, the rates are now at 13 percent.nearly 80 percent raise in less than 6 months.how good it would be,if our salary rise in the same percent level.wildest of the dreams.The trick here is the Pre-EMI that I used to pay stays the same, even the rates have gone up like the inflation time onion price.So, obviously the duration of payment increased. Now its around 25 years and hopefully , I won't leave this debt to my son and eventually my grand son.
Ok,ok.I understand and I will stop my cribbing.Some happy moments too.The square foot value of the land also went up. Many people are adding more square feet under them and the rates had gone up by 20 percent to add to my self consolation. I got in touch with a good interior designer in Bangalore, they too are less known,minnows like Bangladesh cricket team, but did a very good job and I finally have a own house.A dream fulfilled(yet to be,but crossed most of the sea) for me at last.
posted by Unknown @ 12:42 AM,
