Considering SA Home Loans for your financial needs? Well, I get you! Here is everything I found on the internet about SA Home Loans so that you didn’t have to. Thank me later!
Let’s start by accessing what exactly SA Home Loans offer to customers:
1. SA Home Loans: Benefits and More!
Right off the bat, SA home loans offer up to 100% financing! To add to this, they claim to give potential savings on bond attorney fees, and flexible terms up to 30 years.
According to them, you can get these loans against your property based on your credit affordability to ensure that you are not biting off more than you can chew.
To avail these loans, you need to have:
- A good credit history
- South African Citizenship
- For self-employed people: a steady flow of income 🙂
The rates given by SA Home Loans are attractive too and mostly depend on your financial situation and credit history. Don’t worry, these rates are quite fair and follow the rules of the National Credit Act (NCA).
There are multiple benefits of choosing SA Home loans including:
- Grants up to R300,000, with repayment periods up to 7 years.
- Sweeter deals with lower interest for government employees
- 100% financing for household with combined income of R8,000 per month.
- FLISP subsidy to add another layer of affordability for first-time homeowners.
- Plus, homeowners’ insurance is managed directly through your loan account.
However, digging deeper I found a few disadvantages to SA home loans. While a majority of these complaints are about SA home insurance, I will try to cover more on the home loans parts as well.
| Also read: Home Equity Loan in Delaware |
2. Disadvantages of SA Home Loans
2. 1 Applications do not get processed!
With SA home loans, the application processing is often very slow. You can expect to wait for months to receive the status of your application. And in some cases, the point of contact changes without notice!
Here is a review that I found on the same.
One customer write “Been waiting on a status for my application been calling every single day and no response still.” Another writes, “I have applied for home loan for months. Every week my consultant asks for different documents of which I have already provided, to this day I have not received proper feedback.”
That said, sometimes they even lose the documents or the entire trail! 🙂
2.2 Lousy Service
The biggest downside of SA home loans is slow responses and unresolved complaints Despite the company’s generally high level of trust, I have seen a lot of negative reviews about their customer service!
Digging deeper, we found that the company’s complaint resolution process seems to be the most inefficient. Customers have reported that customer service executives were not well equipped to handle complaints and often gave unsatisfactory resolutions.
Sometimes even the calls do not go through and they might forget to reply to you. Read this review and I am sure you will understand!
“I applied for an advanced on my existing bond account last week and submitted everything on time. I was assigned someone who doesn’t even respond to emails let alone acknowledge them”
Also let me tell you a secret🤫: they even deny receiving the claims sometimes! Don’t believe me? Read this review to understand
“I lodged a claim on the 19th of April 2022 for my roof and my driveway to be fixed. I was promised the assessors would come at the beginning of May as they were first dealing with emergencies. On the 12th of May I called their service provider who at first denied that my claim was received by them and after dropping my call they called back and told me they had my claim and would come within 48 hours. Today is the 27th of May 2022 and they still have not come.”
2.3 Ineffective Staff – Loss Assessors and Consultants
Customers have reported having lost money because of the inefficiency of the staff members. The assessors are slow and will take months to detect your losses and file them in a report. Even the reports prepared by them are often far from the actual loss!
Read what this customer had to say about one of their consultants “Wrong information given by consultant hence making me loose thousands”
2.4 Difficulties claiming insurance:
Customers report significant challenges in getting even minor repairs approved and receiving insurance claim payouts. They have reported not having heard from the SA Home loans team even in the case of emergencies!
One customer write, “Our Home that was completely destroyed by Fire in June. SA Home Loans repudiated the Claim, doubled our premium, kicked us when we were down and tried to avoid liability using every trick in the book.”
Another writes, “We have a Homeloan with SA Homeloans going on nearly 17 years and we have had the worst experience with their Insurance section dealing with damages to property caused through events that are completely out of our control.”
2.5 They do not offer further lending!
SA Home Loans denies request for further lending in the registered accounts. Even if you have a bond with them, they will deny this request.
One frustrated customer writea, “I do not understand how so many financial institutes is able to grant me loans of over R200 000 when the institute that I have a bond with is not able to grant me a further lending loan on my current bond which is available to me. I kept being told of my affordability and they keep using the figures incorrectly and telling me I was denied.”
Another writes, “I applied for further lending. After two weeks, the application was eventually processed. On 25 March 2022 I was informed by the consultant that our application was unsuccessful. I tried to point out to her that some of the information they obtained from the credit bureau was in fact incorrect. I was not successful to convince about the factual information I have.”
2.5 Bond Settlement is a problem!
Customer reported that you would not hear from the consultants if you wanted to settle the bonds.
One customer writes, “I want to cancel my bond by paying it up in full and I need to know what this involves. I have received no response even after 20 emails!”
2.6 Cash Payouts
Some customers even talked about how they were told they will get a better cash payout at SA Home Loand and how in reality they got a lot less.
One user writes, “Sahl promised a cash payout of R86000 on the condition of the value of my house. I was approved for R500 000. All the documentation with SA Home Loan showed a cash payout of R86000 After a 3-month lengthy process, I received a cash payout of only R51674.47 today.”
Here are a few other disadvantages to SA home loans
- Limited product offerings: Compared to traditional banks, SA Home Loans may offer fewer loan products and options, potentially limiting your choices.
- Lower loan-to-value ratio: SA Home Loans may offer lower loan-to-value ratios than banks, requiring you to have a larger down payment.
- Stricter lending criteria: Their eligibility requirements might be more stringent than other lenders, making it harder for some borrowers to qualify.
- Deposit Refunds: If you decide to go ahead with another vendor after paying SA Home Loans, you might not get your money back.
- Extra money refund: They do not refund extra money paid towards the bond, even when the bond is paid off!
- They might increase your bond payments without prior notification.
Did I miss anything? If you have something more to add to this, do leave us a comment down below!
No matter what you can do SA Homeloans will not give you further lending in time of need. It is very frustrating and I am looking for another Bank yo move my Bond to.