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...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
Should you take out a building loan?
Mputla wrote to me with an interesting dilemma. He is 32 years old, married with two children. In 2016, he and his wife bought vacant land in a security estate with cash that they had saved for several years. The plan was to build within four...
Video: Shopping around for mortgage insurance
When you take out a mortgage or bond, you will be required to take out life insurance. This is so that if something happens to you, the insurance will cover your mortgage repayments. This usually includes death, disability and possibly retrenchment...
What kind of access bond do you have?
Access bonds have different rules so it is important to understand how yours works. Last month Standard Bank customers received notification that they could choose between two different types of access bonds. While this caused some confusion, it...
Taking cash out of your home in retirement
A lack of retirement savings has seen a significant demand from pensioners to use their homes to access capital, especially for medical costs. A reverse equity mortgage is a special type of home loan that lets you convert a portion of the equity in...
How to pay off your home in ten years
By Rudi Botha, CEO of BetterBond If you have a R1m home loan, payable over 20 years at the current prime interest rate of 10%, you are set to pay more than R1,3m in interest by the time you’ve paid off that bond and the home is finally yours. But...
Previous Articles
What happens to your joint mortgage when your partner is placed under debt review?
Your joint mortgage may form part of your partner’s debt review without your consent. If you are married in community of property and your spouse is placed under debt review, so will you, because you share a joint estate which includes all debt. However, what about...
Factors to consider when ceding your life policy
By Lee Bromfield, CEO of FNB Life Many consumers who are eager to finalise the house-buying process often rush into taking out and ceding life insurance without first doing their homework. The ceding of a life policy involves legally transferring a portion of the...
Avoid being the victim of an unscrupulous builder
Many of us have either been the victim of unscrupulous building contractors or know someone who has been. My sister was one of those victims; despite hiring what she believed to be a reputable project manager to oversee her renovations, she was left with a building...
Student loan or home loan?
A reader recently wrote in, asking whether it would be better to pay for her child's university education from her access bond, or to take out a student loan. A student loan can be very cost effective and in most cases, you would be paying around the prime interest...
How to ensure your home loan pre-qualification stays valid
There is a growing trend in South Africa towards home loan pre-qualification, with both buyers and sellers in real estate transactions putting more value now on financial preparedness. So says Shaun Rademeyer, CEO of BetterBond, SA’s biggest bond originator, who notes...
What is FLISP and how do you qualify?
If your household income is between R3 501 and R15 000 per month, you could benefit from a government programme that could help you put a foot on the property ladder. As a first-time home buyer in South Africa, it’s not easy getting your foot onto the property ladder....
Pros and cons of a joint home loan
With the average house price for a first-time buyer nearly reaching the R1 million mark, few people can afford to buy a home on their own. A R900 000 home loan will require a monthly repayment of R8 800 – this is before you have even started paying for rates,...
How to avoid being turned down for a home loan
When you apply for a home loan, lenders will look at many factors before deciding whether to approve your application or not – and if you don’t “pass the test” for any one of these, they are quite likely to turn you down. “This is why it is so important for...
Tips for successful ‘semigration’
Making the move to the coast? Here’s how to lose less in an expensive transition. Many Gautengers dream of leaving their busy life in the big smoke and setting up a new, slower life in beautiful Cape Town. Unfortunately a lot of these dreams never come true because...
Understand the implications when drawing from your home loan
If you want to draw down on the equity built up in your property, you may be in for a nasty surprise. Paragon Lending Solutions recently issued a press release warning investors and small business owners that if they try and access additional capital through their...