Empowering Filipinos with free home financial counseling

Do you think you are ready to buy a new home for your family? Do you think your savings are enough to fund your purchase? Would your net disposable income remain positive while you are paying for the amortization of your new home?

"These are the top three questions that buyers should ask themselves even before they start to pick out their choice of house and lot," said Lowell Yu, head of the Home Advocacy Department of Earth+Style. "However, the last question is the most important, since it impacts greatly on the capacity of the homebuyer to adequately fund his purchase of a new home," he added.

Yu is also one of the financial advisers of the recently established Free Home Financial Counseling Program, a corporate social responsibility project set up by Earth+Style, the country’s premier lifestyle property developer for the middle-income market.

The program aims to help promote "buyers’ welfare" by protecting homebuyers through free personal financial assessment and evaluation, empowering them with effective financial plans that will help ensure their ability to pay for the home of their dreams.

The program is open to buyers and non-buyers alike of Earth+Style properties and has already assisted around 300 Filipino buyers since it began operating.

"A lot of Filipinos still believe that just having savings that will cover the down-payment for the new property is enough reason to go ahead with their purchase. But what they don’t consider is that amortization payments would eat up a major portion of their net disposable income for the entire period of the payment schedule. This is the major reason why some homebuyers end up losing their investments, when they suddenly find themselves unable to keep up with the amortization payments," said Yu.

Through the free Home Financial Counseling program, advisers guide homebuyers in evaluating their own personal financial capacity, taking into account all major and minor household expenses that are deducted from their monthly income in order to derive their monthly net disposable income. After the exercise, the adviser creates a projection based on the payment scheme of the intended property, planning it out so as to ascertain if homebuyers’ finances will still be positive once they buy a house or in danger of going into negative halfway through the payment schedule.

Yu shared that awareness of one’s actual net disposable income will give the homebuyer the ability to discern if he can truly afford the new home. Those whose computations turn out negative will be in danger of defaulting on their payments, thereby suffering the loss of their initial investments.

Yu explained that the counseling is a confidential, one-on-one process between the counselor and the homebuyer and is not a pre-requisite to buying an Earth+Style property.

"The program requires that homebuyers be honest and open-minded in revealing and computing their family’s expenses," Yu explained. "But a negative result in the assessment need not mean the end for the dream of owning a home. The counselor will also give advice on how families can reorganize their monthly budgets, cutting back on certain expenses in order to attain a positive result in their financial plan projections."

Yu also advised interested homebuyers to do their own personal home financial evaluation prior to availing of the Home Financial Counseling by conducting the following:

• Identify all expenses — One common flaw in household budgeting is that only the large expenses are listed. List down snacks, movies and other minute expenses because these still eat up portions of the net disposable income.

• Keep track of finances — While budgeting is important, tracking spending habits will greatly help in computing your personal finance status. List down everything you earn and spend!

• Track credit card use — Credit cards are a great way of extending ones spending power. But it can also be detrimental to computing for personal liquidity and paying for your dream home. Try to settle debts and curb usage to lessen the impact on personal liquidity.

• Savings is a big plus — Saved funds are always essential in making the step forward to owning your home. But one must still strive for a positive net disposable income result when computing for amortization payments.

• Come to counseling with an open mind — The best way to plan for a future home is through the help of professionals. The Home Financial Counselors will help the family reorganize household budgets, revealing options where savings can be achieved for a higher net disposable income result.

For inquiries about Earth+Style Home Financial Counseling, call 638-85-58 or 0918-88-STYLE or visit www.earthandstyle.com.