Home Loan Features
Home loans nowadays can come with an array of amazing features that allow borrowers to better manage their mortgage, and save money. Sadly, many Australians have a very limited understanding of how these features work or what they can do to maximise these features for their benefit. 3Carrots is here to help you understand these features. We’ll show you how to use them to manage your finances better, and how to pay off your home loan faster.
Extra repayments
This feature will allow you to make extra payments on top of your minimum repayments and thus enjoy savings on loan term and interest cost. You can make regular extra repayments, which can be automatically debited from your account. Or you can make irregular bulk reductions whenever you have extra funds available for it. This is an excellent way of reducing the total cost of your home loan.
Redraw
If ever you make any extra repayments and ‘get ahead’ on your loan, ‘redraw’ allows you to withdraw those additional repayments back out form you mortgage in part, or in full. For example, if you make extra repayments of $500 per month on a regular basis, you can redraw up to $6,000 at the end of the year.
Professional package discounts
When you get a professional package, you pay an annual fee in exchange for several discounts from your lender. Some of the benefits include waived application fee, waived valuation fee, waived monthly fee on your loan, interest rate discounts, discounted insurance products, and more depending on your lender!
Repayment holiday
This option is usually used when there’s a change in your circumstances, for example when your income suddenly reduces due to job loss, or as a result of a new baby in your family. Basically any significant event that leads to reduced income. With repayment holiday you can reduce or delay your repayments up to six months, during which time interest is capitalised onto your loan.
Salary crediting
Did you know that you can pay your mortgage directly by having it credited with your entire salary each month? You are more likely to use this feature if you are salary sacrificing your home loan or you have a Line of Credit loan. This is another excellent way of reducing the total cost of your home loan.
Loan splitting
This feature allows you to have multiple loan accounts, which means you can set up portions of your loan to be fixed and other portions to be variable to protect yourself partially from rising interest rates or to monitor your loan more effectively.
Loan portability
The loan portability feature is usually used when you sell your existing home and buy a new one. It allows you to transfer your loan into the other property you are getting. This is usually done on the same day so you can avoid applying for a new home loan when you switch homes.
100% offset account
A 100% offset account allows you to link your everyday banking account to your home loan to reduce the interest you have to pay. This is without having to make extra repayments on your home loan. With an offset account, you are charged interest on your home loan balance minus the amount you have on your offset account. This is an excellent way of reducing the total cost of your home loan over the long term.
Interest only
The interest only feature allows you to pay just the interest due each month and forego the principal for usually up to five years. However, you will not be able to pay off the loan quickly unless you make extra repayments.