In a bid to in­crease the avail­abil­i­ty of mort­gages, Re­pub­lic Bank has ex­pand­ed the length of mort­gage terms and raised the qual­i­fy­ing ages.

These changes were con­firmed by the bank dur­ing its Mort­gage Mix­er 2023, held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port of Spain at which it was con­firmed that the bank had raised the mort­gage pe­ri­od to 40 years.

“We un­der­stand that mort­gages are not mere­ly a fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tion. They are piv­otal mile­stone in peo­ple’s lives. They cre­ate mem­o­ries and build com­mu­ni­ties. It is with great pride and en­thu­si­asm that I share some ex­cit­ing news about our mort­gage of­fer­ings,” said Sharzard Mo­hammed, gen­er­al man­ag­er com­mer­cial and re­tail man­ag­er.

“Max­i­mum mort­gage up to 40 years around the max­i­mum age of ap­pli­cants up to age 70. Age lim­it up to 75 years for pro­fes­sion­als,” said Mo­hammed, who al­so ex­plained that the pre­vi­ous ceil­ing on 100 per cent fi­nanced mort­gages had al­so been re­moved.

He said, “In 2017, when we in­tro­duced 100 per cent fi­nanc­ing but it’s now no lim­its on 100 per cent fi­nanc­ing. So the pre­vi­ous ceil­ing was $2 mil­lion is no longer there.”

Re­pub­lic Bank’s gen­er­al man­ag­er for group mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Karen Tom Yew said the bank recog­nised the eco­nom­ic pe­ri­od had been dif­fi­cult for many mil­len­ni­als, who are now seek­ing to be­come home­own­ers and have be­come wary of the cur­rent re­al es­tate mar­ket.

“Be­ing a mil­len­ni­al has its pros and cons. Right? They have grown up in harsh­er eco­nom­ic times than any gen­er­a­tion since the Great De­pres­sion. But they have ac­cess to many more lenders, many more val­u­a­tors, many more at­tor­neys and much more every­thing than we ever would have had. They have choice, choice and more choice.

“And they ex­pect faster ap­provals, re­quire com­plete trans­paren­cy and are quick, as we know, to loud you up on so­cial me­dia, or wher­ev­er they can, should any­thing in the process not go as they like,” she said.

Shed­ley Branche, Re­pub­lic’s re­gion­al sales man­ag­er, com­mer­cial and re­tail bank­ing for RBL said the mix­er was im­por­tant for the wider pub­lic to learn that there were more op­tions avail­able for them in terms of se­cur­ing a mort­gage.

He said, “We’ve been hav­ing a cam­paign re­ferred to as ‘Now-you-Can mort­gage and ba­si­cal­ly what it is, is that we’re mak­ing the mort­gage as af­ford­able and as ac­ces­si­ble to as wide a num­ber of per­sons as pos­si­ble. So this event is a com­bi­na­tion of that cam­paign, where we’ve watched the re­al es­tate agents and oth­er stake­hold­ers so that they are aware of our var­i­ous mort­gage fea­tures.”