6 Reasons Why You Should NOT Repay Your Housing Loan Early

Dennis Ng from www.HousingLoanSG.com, a leading Mortgage Consultancy portal, has been helping and advising many people with regards to housing loan. One of his advice is not to repay your housing loan early, even if you have the capability to do so. Why? You must be thinking it is so contrary to what was often preached – be debt free as soon as possible! Dennis does have very valid points:

1) It is the cheapest loan

Housing loan is the cheapest loan you can ever get from banks. The interest is about 3-4% and you compare it to car loan (7%), unsecured personal loan (14%) and credit card loan (24%). You can see the contrasting difference! Don’t you think you should leverage on the cheapest loan available to you?

2) Your networth remains the same

Repaying your housing loan early does not increase your net worth. This is because you are just taking your cash from your bank and putting it into the house. Worse, you are actually freezing your cash.

3) Losing your life and money

Having a mortgage insurance can help you in the event of death or total disability, where your loan will be paid off by the insurance. The cash or CPF monies can be left for your beneficiaries. If you have repaid the loan using your cash and CPF, you would have lost this advantage.

4) Opportunity Cost

With the cash in hand, you can invest and generate better returns. Rather than being cash strapped, you have the purchasing power to pick up real bargain stocks when the market crashes. Again, it will not be possible if you have your money locked in the house.

5) Use Interest Offset Loan

With an interest offset loan, you can earn interest on your cash to offset 100% of your housing loan interest you pay on your loan. This equates to repaying your loan, but with the liquidity of your cash where you can deploy when good investment opportunity arises.

6) Buy Single Premium Endowment

If you do not know how to invest and would want to avoid all ‘risky’ products, you can buy a single premium endowment, maybe for 20 years at 3.5% annual return. This would be able to offset your housing loan interest.