A once soft landing for young homebuyers is turning unexpectedly hard as some large banks have recently stopped a preferential loan programme for home purchase of young customers, signalling a tightening credit climate.
The preferential loan programme for home purchase of young customers was implemented by four State-owned banks from the first quarter of 2025 with an interest rate of 5.5 per cent fixed in the first three years. It has been considered the most attractive loan programme in many years.
The low-interest loan packages are suspended in the context of a rapid increase in bank credit and pressure from rising input interest rates. Credit growth surged by nearly 14 per cent in the first three quarters of this year and is estimated to hit more than 18 per cent for the whole year while deposit interest rates have so far this year increased by some 0.5 basis points.
Agribank has announced that it has stopped implementing the preferential loan programme for home purchase for young customers. Besides, this bank also stopped another preferential loan programme to serve the needs of buying houses, receiving land use rights transfer and house building and repairs.
However, the preferential loan programme for buying social housing for young people under 35 years old of Agribank is still being implemented with a lending interest rate of about 6.1 per cent per year.
BIDV has also informed that its preferential loan programme for young people to buy commercial housing is suspended. Previously, individual customers up to 35 years old who want to buy or rent-purchase houses nationwide were supported by BIDV’s loans with an interest rate of 5.5 per cent per year fixed within 3 years. The loans have a term of up to 40 years and require no principal payments for the first 5 years.
Meanwhile, some other banks said that they are still implementing preferential home purchase loan programmes for customers but the interest rate is no longer as preferential as before.
Vietcombank said that the interest rate for the loan package currently increases to 6.3 per cent per year in the preferential period.
At smaller private commercial banks such as BVBank, SHB and HDBank, preferential credit packages for home loans are still being implemented but the interest rate will be applied to each type of real estate and will change during each period.
Some people who are borrowing to buy houses also said that they have received notices from their bank about raising the interest rate. — BIZHUB/VNS
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