Buying our new home was a little off our budget . I wasn’t too confident in getting another [tag]housing loan[/tag] as we had an existing housing loan for 6 years now. I have no idea how the banking sector works or how credit scores are attained. All I know is we have an excellent credit history as we never missed payments. Maybe , I thought, we might get a second housing loan. Who knows?

With low interest rates of 9 to 10 % per annum, a number of banks offer very competitive [tag]real estate loan[/tag] packages.

I started shopping for real estate loan packages three months ago.

1. BPI Family Savings Bank Build Your Dream Housing Loan View their website

Our first housing loan came from BPI Family Savings Bank . They are the leader in the housing loan. Back in 2000, we bought our second home and at that time our interest rates was the market rate. In the succeeding years, BPI Family bank placed a higher interest rate on our loan while giving premium rates to their preferred customers. They also had very high insurance premiums added to our loan. So unfair.

In 2003, I availed of Chinatrust’ refinancing scheme which brought down my monthly amortization to less than 2000 pesos from the BPI Family loan. We were overjoyed.

I took a good look again at their “Build Your Dream Housing Loan” which requires a monthly income of 40,000 a month. They have definitely learned from their competitors but I lost my trust already so BPI Family Bank was out of the picture. They were only good to us during the first two years of our loan. They should have been more nice to us on our third year. I wanted a bank to take care of us not just during the first year but during the entire life of the loan.

So bye bye BPI Family Bank.

2. Banco De Oro Super Value Home Loan (BDO)
I discovered that BDO is the first bank to offer a 25-year home loan and requires a gross monthly income of 50,000 before one can avail of their home loan. I didn’t think I’d qualify for the 25 year loan. The best way to apply was through their branches which I did. How disappointing . The bank officer had no idea on certain requirements. She had to call the main office for information. Such a turnoff. Bye bye!

3. Chinabank Homeplus Real Estate Loan
I got attracted to their low fixed interest rates and rate fixing options. They also had low filing and processing fees of 1500 pesos. A house we nearly wanted to purchase had an exsiting loan with Chinabank. It seemed easy to get this loan as all the papers were already submitted. But we decided not to buy that particular house because we discovered severe structural defects.

4. Metrobank Metrohome
Metrobank offered a MetroHome Rate Protect for those who prefer the advantage of yearly re-pricing plus added protecticion from drastic interest rate surges via guaranteed interest rate limits. The thing is I didn’t know anyone who availed of their loan. I just kept this bank on “standby mode”.

5. PS Bank Home Loan
The owner of our property advised us to try PS Bank since an appraisal of their property was already in that bank. I never heard of PS Bank’s reputation. They guarantee a five day credit process with their “Thank Goodness, It’s Five Days (TGIF) ” promise. The guarantee is that they offer a 1% interest rate discount on the first year if they don’t deliver the decision in 5 days or less. The nice thing about the bank is that they offer fixed rate loans for 10, 15,20 and 25 years.

PS Bank was in my shortlist of housing loan choices.

6. RCBC Savings Bank Home Loan
Their Home Starter Loan and Home Budgeter Loan is such a wise promotional gimmick. Imagine their Home Starter loan allows first time homeowners to focus on expenditures related to home acquisition with its “cutting edge” feature of absolutely NO monthly payments for the first year. I bet interest rates are high too. Ahh, but we are not first time homeowners. Maybe I will consider their Home Budgeter Loan in the future.

7. Chinatrust (View their website

Like I said earlier, we have an existing loan with them. They had been fair with interest rates, always repricing it yearly with the existing market rates. We held an excellent credit history.

Evidently, there are many real estate loan packages and each have their own merits. In the end, we chose Chinatrust. Aside from being a reputable and liquid bank, another important aspect I considered was the compatibility to our needs and situation.