Mortgage can be extinguished ahead of schedule

Borrowers-a-single borrowers will soon receive the right to repay loans ahead of schedule without any fines by banks. The corresponding amendments to the Civil Code on Friday were adopted by the State Duma in the first reading. If the law enters into force, banks will lose about 2% of income on each early loan, and they will compensate for these losses by raising other loans commissions, Kommersant writes with reference to experts.

Currently, the early repayment of the loan at any time of the loan agreement without commissions and fines is practiced only by Sberbank. In other banks, a loan can be repaid ahead of schedule only with the consent of the bank, and most sets the period during which the loan cannot be repaid, or fines for early repayment. Particularly strict measures are introduced regarding a mortgage: this is either a 3-6-month moratorium on early repayment, or fines on average about 2% of the amount of early repayment, says one of the authors of the new bill Arkady Svistunov. According to him, banks with foreign participation, for example, under the conditions of Raiffeisenbank, behave most strictly, the commission for early repayment of a mortgage loan during the first five years is 4% of the amount of early payment.

Borrowers strive to repay loans ahead of schedule, despite the crisis. So, according to the statistics of an agency for mortgage housing lending, with an average deadline for issuing a loan 15 years, the actual “life lifespan” is 7 years. “The main reason for the desire of citizens to return ahead of schedule, in particular, a mortgage loan is a giant total overpayment,” the explanatory note to the bill says. “If you take a schedule for repaying a loan for 20 years, it can be seen that the mortgage apartment will cost twice as if it is bought at a time.” Early repayment of a mortgage in most banks is not allowed during the first six months of the loan agreement, for this period, overpayment will be about 2-2.5% of the loan amount. In auto and consumption, the level of early repayment is about 20%, says Yegor Schkerin, director of the retail sales department of Promsvyazbank. The instability of foreign exchange rates, which manifested during the crisis, stimulates early repayment by citizens of foreign exchange loans, the authors of the bill noted.

Amendments will allow "to balance the rights and obligations of the parties to the loan agreement", lawmakers believe. However, bankers are different.

Now the volumes of early repayment are 10-15%according to different products, and after the cancellation of the Moratorials and fines, they can increase, said the Vice President of Citibank Natalya Nikolaeva. First of all, borrowers with income above the average will be repaid prematurely, who take loans for large purchases in order to return from future income in a couple of months, for example, bonuses, said Ilya Zibarev, deputy head of the Alfa Business Retail Business block.

“This will increase the risks of banks. In order to recapture the underground income, banks will increase the cost of loans,” Nikolaeva is convinced. It will be risky to increase the interest rate on loans - the general rate for reducing rates is indicated in the statements of the government and the Central Bank, in addition, the debtor of the bank with an increased interest rate will simply take a loan at another bank, where the rate is lower, and at the expense of these funds he will pay prematurely with the first creditor, experts indicate. "Banks will have to compensate for the loss by raising other commissions," says Zibarev.