The government-owned Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd has again started offering individual
home loans at lending rates as low as 8.5 per cent.
"We have revived
HUDCO 'niwas'. Earlier, we used to offer individual housing loans, it was stopped around two years back. From now, this year we have started providing loans to individuals," HUDCO Chairman and Managing Director V P Baligar said.
"Interest rate is least in the country at 10 per cent. If you belong to the economically weaker section category, you get it for 8.5 per cent," he added.
Commenting on the earlier policy of lending across the country, Baligar said that "there was the difficulty in collecting cheques and other things."
"Unfortunately, earlier we used to lend anywhere in the country, in any urban area or rural area... Monitoring was very difficult. Now, we limit our operations only to the state headquarters," he said.
"Earlier we could even give Rs 50 lakhs-60 lakhs, any amount. Now we have limited it to only Rs 25 lakh, because we want to concentrate on EWS, Low Income Group and Middle Income Group," Baligar said.
He explained that the decision to focus on lower price segment houses was taken because private banks were meeting the requirements in the higher price segments.
He said banks are willing to give loans to HUDCO as it was rated AA plus by Fitch.
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