Mumbai, June 19 -- Home loan borrowers seem to be in a fix over whether to wait for the external benchmark-linked lending rate to take effect, or to pay a fee to avail of the cheaper rates immediately, with banks and housing finance companies offering both options.
While interest rate changes on a new repo or other external benchmark-linked loans for banks take effect every quarter, the changes for housing finance companies take longer, as mortgage lenders base their rates on an internal benchmark of cost of funds.
For instance, State Bank of India's repolinked rate came down by 40 basis points (bps) after the rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India. LIC Housing Finance's prime lending rate, or PLR (its benchmark), has remained at 14.7% sin...