Interest on housing loans will be cheaper with State Bank of India (SBI) reducing interest rates by 25 basis points across all tenures. This cut comes in the wake of SBI lowering its prime lending rate, medium term lending rate and short term advance rate by 0.25 per cent with effect from this month.SBI officials said the new floating rate for a loan of upto five years would be 9.25 per cent as against 9.5 per cent earlier. This was the third reduction by the country’s largest bank in the last four months. The first cut was affected in July followed by another a month later.Loans with tenure of five to less than 10 years and 10-20 years would be charged an interest of 9.75 per cent (10 per cent) and 10.25 per cent (10.50 per cent) respectively, sources said. The processing charge of 0.5 per cent on the loan amount remains waived off till January 31, 2003.
