eople say that searching for a home is stressful. In fact, I found hunting for finance the tough part.
I am not saying that everyone has a tough time looking for a loan, but I did.
Here's hoping you can learn something from it.
Buying the home was easy
I began by going on a house hunt and finally located one that suited my taste and budget.
Since the apartment was not under construction but ready for occupation, the agreement was quickly drawn up.
I made the downpayment on March 28, 2005 and was to make the balance payment of Rs 12,00,000 to the builder by May 1, 2005. If not, he would charge me interest at 7% per annum.
Zeroing in on a finance player was easy too
Soon after making my downpayment, I wasted no time in scouting around for a loan. I had just one month to make the payment to the builder.
Since the house is in Mumbai, I decided to apply for a home loan in that city itself.
I picked up ICICI Bank for two reasons.
1. Pre-approval of property
Since the property was pre-approved by ICICI Bank, I picked them up for finance.
Many builders get their properties pre-approved by home finance companies. Generally, if a builder gets pre-approved by a number of players, it speaks well of the builder.
The home finance company will examine all the legal documentation and approvals. If everything is in order, the builder will get a stamp of approval. Also, the home loan player will view the builder's ability and track record to complete the construction in time.
However, this does not mean the home finance company is going to take any action or waive any charges if the construction is delayed.
All it means is that the property falls within the legal purview and the builder has a good track record.
2. Company recognised by the bank
My company is listed with the bank as a Tier-1 company.
Banks have a list of special companies which are categorised as Tier-1, Tier-2 etc. A Tier-1 company is a stable and reliable and profit-making company. Employees of such companies would get a marginally less interest rate as compared to the normal market rate.
So I approached the ICICI Bank Direct Sales Agent who had tied up with the builder.
I submitted all the documents required and they agreed to give me the loan.
All's well? That's what I thought.
The problems begin
The only problem (though I did not view it as one -- it turned out to be so) was that I worked and resided in Pune.
My actual workplace address is Pune and this is reflected in my appointment letter with the company and my visiting card.
However, on my salary slip, the address mentioned is the company's registered office address in Delhi.
I informed the bank about these two addresses. I explained the fact to them that at the company's registered office, only administrative work is carried on and they would not be able to identify me. Hence, verification will have to be done at the Pune office.
While they agree, in reality this never happened. The first verification took place somewhere between April 15 and 18 at the Delhi office. Obviously, they were unable to get positive report.
From the 18th onwards, I called up the DSA every single day for the next 10 days. They did not call me even once.
Every time I spoke to them, I was told that the loan would be disbursed in next two days.
Even the ICICI Credit Manager sitting at DSA's office assured me the same.
Finally, the loan application got rejected only because the verification report was negative. This implied that the employee was not working in the company mentioned or the company did not exist.
Now I was in a soup.
The same city helps
In desperation, I decided to apply for a loan from Pune via ICICI Bank. For the reasons mentioned above, I decided to stick with ICICI Bank.
On April 29, I took all my documents from the Mumbai office and taxi-couriered them to Pune and reapplied through the Pune office that very day.
Surprise! I got the home loan almost instantly. On May 2, I sent a copy of the sanction letter to the builder who offered to extend my deadline.
By May 6, the entire loan amount was approved and disbursed to the builder.
Within a week, I got the entire deal done from the Pune office.
The irony is that I did get finance in the end. For the same home, from the same bank, submitting the identical documents, with the same salary and the identical salary slip too.
So what was the big deal?
ICICI Bank (Pune branch) had no problem with the office registration address differing from my workplace address.
Do you have any house hunting or home loan experience you would like to share? We would love to hear from you.
Note: These views are solely the author's and are not in any way endorsed by rediff.com
