Indiabulls Home Loan Review

Indiabulls Home Loan Review

I recently bought a house in Delhi and took a home loan from Indiabulls. This is a short article on how I found their services, for anyone who is considering a home loan from this company.

Indiabulls Home Loan Services Review

1. Why Indiabulls Home Loan: In Delhi where the land is limited and population is growing at an alarming rate, Independent builder floors are becoming extremely popular. Though they cost slightly less, problem with these floors and flats is that they are not MCD approved. Areas like Dabri extension and Uttam Nagar are not government approved colonies and hence there is no map for properties built here. Due to this, major private banks like ICICI or HDFC would never finance or give out a home loan for these properties. So the only remaining option is to either approach brokerage companies like Indiabulls or secure a home loan from a nationalized bank. To get a nationalized bank to finance your house, you will need to go through an agent because like private banks, even nationalized banks do not finance these floors. If you go through an agent, he would charge you a minimum of 8% of the total loan amount in order to get your application approved. So for example, if you secured a home loan of say 25 lacs, you will have to pay the agent a total of Rs. 2 lacs. This money however can be saved if you financed through firms like Indiabulls.

2. Interest Rate – Their interest rates are always slightly higher than what you can get from a private or nationalized bank. For example, the current home loan interest rate was 10.75% but Indiabulls offered me the loan at 11.25%. It definitely means an increase in my EMI but when I calculated, if I went through an agent to get a loan from nationalized bank at 10.75% and paid him Rs. 2 lacs in cash, it would have taken me more than 10 years to recover this amount by paying a lesser EMI. It wasn’t really worth it so I opted for Indiabulls.

3. Convenience – There was not really much hassle while dealing with Indiabulls. Their agent came to my place, got the documents populated and signed, got the paperwork from me and submitted it. A week later I got the sanction letter in the email post which they took a few days to verify the property, its market rate and to validate all the property related documents. When they were satisfied, I received a call that I can set up a date for property registration. Their lawyer was present at the court at appointed time to hand-over the cheque.

4. EMIs – They will always send me a message to notify me a few days prior to the date when the EMI is to be deducted from my account.

5. Customer Care – During my first EMI, they charged me interest for 10 days before the funds were disbursed. I called their customer service about this and within 10 days they refunded the amount charged. However a few days ago I called them in order to get a provisional statement that I could submit for tax saving purpose. They gave me a request number and promised that I will receive the statement in email within 24 hours however a few days have passed and I am yet to receive it.

Overall, I was satisfied with the services provided by Indiabulls Home Loan department. For anyone looking to buy a floor in Delhi, even though the interest rate is slightly higher, Indiabulls is a good option to consider for home loan. The only thing in my opinion that went wrong in my dealings with these guys was when their agent tricked me into buying an insurance policy of ICICI Lombard. He told me that I must take the insurance policy in order to get approval for the  loan which was not the case so this was an additional cost to me which was included in my loan amount. The agent, as I was to learn later, lied to me in order to get commission for selling insurance and it was not at all a mandate from Indiabulls. I came to know from a couple of other people that this is a common practice in home loan agents, tricking unaware customers into buying insurance so If you are taking a home-loan, please do not fall for this. No bank of finance company forces its customers to apply for an insurance.

Updated:  May 2015  :  Indiabulls Home Loans

In January this year, I needed a provisional tax certificate showing my repayments on home loan for tax saving purpose. The first time I called their customer service, the guy assured me that I will get it in my within 3 working days which did not happen. I kept waiting for about a week and when the email did not come, I again called the customer service. The lady again promised that she has taken my request and guaranteed that I will get it within 24 hours. A document did arrive in my inbox the next day but it only showed my repayments till December 2014. I again had to call the customer service and told them that I need a provisional certificate showing how much I would pay in interest and towards principal by the end of March 2014. This time I finally received the right document in my email the next day.

In April then this year, on their own and without me requesting it, they sent me a provisional certificate in advance showing the entire amount I would be paying in year 2015-2016. I know I had to make three calls to get what I needed but overall I was satisfied with their customer service.