—Pravin Saxena

You can repay your home loan by arranging funds from your brother. However, before deciding to prepay your home loan, you must note that housing loans have great tax benefits, which makes the effective interest rate much lower.

Also, in case you are servicing multiple loans, such as a car loan or a personal loan, it is advisable that you evaluate all the loans and decide to repay the higher cost loans first. You may seek advice from a financial planner.

I want to take a home loan for a flat I recently booked. I changed my job three months back and also have some credit card default. Can this affect my loan approval?

—Devangi Bharuch

Changing your job per se will not affect loan approval. However, regular defaults of any kind, such as that of a credit card, could affect your home loan approval. The Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd (Cibil) helps lenders by providing them with credit information/credit history and repayment track record of the loan seeker before sanctioning any kind of loan/credit instrument. Credit history reflects all banking transactions of an individual, including defaults and amount overdue. The records are updated by Cibil on a regular basis as the financial institutions/banks submit details to the bureau. Therefore, one must be careful with his/her repayments and, as far as possible, should avoid defaults, late payments or cheque bounces.

Our ancestral property is in my mother’s name in a village near Kolkata. I work in New Delhi and want to get that house renovated. Can I get a loan in my name to renovate the house? My mother is not my dependant.

—Sagar Jha

A home improvement loan for repairs or renovation of property can be applied for either individually or jointly. Since your mother is the owner of the property, she will have to apply for the loan and you can be a co-applicant, provided all other conditions that apply to a normal housing loan are met. These conditions include joint application and title of the property. The amount of loan will be subject to your repaying capacity.

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