Buying a home is a major financial commitment. While the rate of interest on a home loan is lower than for other forms of credit, the length of time it takes to pay off the loan means you end up paying a hefty interest bill. By reducing your...
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How to save on home loan insurance
When applying for a home loan, the bank will insist that you take out home loan insurance to cover the repayments in the event of death, disability, or retrenchment. Evelyn Doubell, Private Wealth Manager at NFB Wealth Management finds that it’s...
Pros and cons of a pension-backed home loan
If you're looking at taking out a home loan, it may be worth enquiring whether you can use your pension fund as a guarantee for the loan. A pension fund is permitted by the Pension Funds Act to lend a member an amount of money for the purposes of...
Making the home loan process less painful
Buying a home can be a very emotional experience. You’ve found the home of your dreams and imagined yourself living there, and then you take the financial leap of committing yourself to a home loan and years of repayments. Yet the home loan...
Online service to value property and vehicles
If you are looking to buy or sell a property, or even just want to find out what the properties in your area are worth, Lightstone Property has introduced an easy, low-cost valuation service for individuals. In the past, the company provided the...
How does my access bond work?
If you are confused about the effects of depositing extra funds into your home loan, you are not alone. During lockdown, many people looked into their finance agreements, which resulted in a lot of queries about what happens when you pay an...
Get a home inspection before you buy
So you've finally found your dream home and are ready to put in an offer. Before you dive in, be sure that you conduct a home inspection. This is according to Marius Steyn, Personal Lines Underwriting Manager at Santam. Steyn suggests including a...
Listen: Money Makeover: How to invest in property
Have you fallen into property investing by accident? Are you an existing property investor looking to consolidate, or planning on buying your first property? In this podcast Maya (@mayaonmoney) chats to Miguel Martins of Absa Home Loans, a property...
Money Makeover: Lessons in planning a successful property portfolio
Like many ad-hoc property investors, Colen has largely fallen into property investment by accident, grabbing opportunities as they arose. He has built a property portfolio of five properties which has put him under financial pressure. His Money...
Video: Should you use your home loan to buy a car?
Home loans are usually the cheapest form of financing and it may seem like common sense to use this lower interest rate to pay for shorter-term debt like car finance. In theory you save money by paying a lower interest rate, however, most people...
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Video: What happens when you pay off your home loan?
If you have been paying extra into your home loan and have settled it before the required date, you need to decide whether you wish to keep the mortgage bond in place. The home loan is the credit facility that the bank grants, while the mortgage bond refers to the...
Using a personal loan to pay off your home
“I have been paying extra into my mortgage each month but it still taking a long time to pay if off”, says Martha, a reader who wonders if it would make sense to rather take out a personal loan over five years and use the money to settle her mortgage. Her logic is...
What happens when you pay off your home loan?
If you have been paying extra into your home loan and have settled it before the required date, you need to decide whether you wish to keep the bond in place or go through the cancellation process. If you want to cancel the bond, then you will be required to give the...
Listen: The 20-year home loan fallacy
In this week’s edition, Maya (@mayaonmoney) and Mapalo (@womanandfinance) explain how you can pay your house off as quickly as your car. Also, In the light of the recent raid by the authorities on CoinIt and Commex Minerals, they discuss the increase in dubious...
Video: Watch out for property purchasing costs
I was recently speaking to a young woman who had just bought her first house. She admitted that she had been caught completely off guard by all the expenses she had to incur. She discovered that buying a house is a lot more expensive than just being able to afford the...
The stubborn home loan debt
The first few years of paying off your home loan can be a very disheartening experience. Despite paying in thousands, if not tens of thousands of rands each month, the amount you still owe hardly budges. In the first few years interest makes up a very large part of...
Listen: Why it takes forever to reduce your home loan
Why does that extra R500 paid into your home loan make such a big difference? Maya Fisher-French (@mayaonmoney) and Mapalo Makhu (@womanandfinance) have the answer in this week’s My Money, My Lifestyle podcast. They also look at why you should start saving as soon as...
A car or an apartment?
A 23-year-old wants to do the right thing with her money and not end up a casualty of ‘bad debt’. Nthabiseng has just graduated and started her first job. She still lives at home and is currently using her parents’ car. “I am caught in between buying a comfortable car...
Should you renegotiate your mortgage rate?
Even a 0.25% reduction in your mortgage rate could save you tens of thousands of rands, but how open is your bank to the discussion? Personal finance blogger Steathy Wealth wrote last year about how he managed to save himself R83 000 by asking his bank to reduce his...
Off-plan property buyers caught unawares by development delays
Buying a property off plan is often perceived as a smart option for people looking for a good deal. Negotiating directly with developers on your requirements and even sometimes benefiting from a lower price can seem attractive. However, Wilhelm Jonker, business...