[ BusinessWorld Online ]
August 16, 2011
The Philippine National Bank has extended its lowest housing loan rate promotion of 5.5 percent due to high demand.
The 5.5 percent interest rate on fixed housing loan payable in one year has gained popularity, together with the 8.8 percent interest rate on fixed housing loan payable in five years.
PNB offers the lowest one-year fixed rate interest in the country.
"We have been getting a lot of requests and inquiries from clients to prolong our home loan offer when they found out that the promo period was about to end. Because of this, we decided to extend the application deadline since we want to make PNB Home Loan available to more clients," said Elfren Antonio Sarte, head of consumer finance group.
PNB’s home loan can be used to pay for residential house and/or lots, condominiums, home repairs, renovation, and construction.
Also, the loan can be used to refinance current or past housing bank loans with other banks.
Meanwhile, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas reported an improvement in the total residential real estate loan (RRL), which stood at P192.1 billion in March this year, a 2-percent increase from the P188.3 billion in the same period last year.
The quarter-on-quarter growth was driven by the 5.1 percent increase in RRL from universal and commercial banks to P96.9 billion from P92.2 billion.
While improvements were evident in the universal and commercial banks’ RRL, thrift banks on the other hand slipped 1 percent to P95.2 billion from P96.1 billion on the same quarter last year.
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