Interest Rate Sets To Rise, and Is Not Just BLR

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the good old days of low interest rates is over soon. Therefore, be prepared to tighten your seatbelt for your secured property loans.

As we all know, US QE tapering has already begun and is a matter of time the Federal Reserve will start raising their interest rates. We have already witnessed a number of Asian countries started to raise their interest rates too, in order to prevent significant capital outflows. Will Malaysia be any different?

The answer is quite a certainty, NO. Foreign liquidity is like a sum of all parts, someone will gain at the expense of others, and vice-versa.

At the banking side, we are already seeing banks gradually revising their interest rates upwards, by reducing the spreads. That means to say, loan packages such as BLR-2.4 or BLR-2.5% may just be a thing of the past. And we are not even talking about BLR yet (currently at 6.6%), which is directly influenced by Bank Negara's OPR (Overnight Policy Rate). Few months back, Bank Negara already presented a working paper on revamping the BLR framework, with the intention to protect the risks of Malaysia's lending financial system. Obviously, Bank Negara is concerned that with the potential real estate property cycle reaching its peak, our banks might have undertaken too much risk by undercutting their margins (vs the cost of funds).

Should say BLR increased by 50 basis point, and spread reduced to 2%, the effective interest rate will become 5.1%. That translates to about 11% increase in monthly installment for a loan size of RM500k with 30 years loan tenure!

For the more conservative, time to look at fixed rate loan perhaps?