Is your HOUSE hurting your retirement corpus?

PV SubramanyamSubramoney.comHave you ever realized that in India when you pay an EMI there is very little towards principal and much more towards interest?When you are say 30 years of age and you go and get a big, big housing loan, let us look at what really happens. You are young, confident, and your wife (and everybody else!!) give you solid advice "You will buy only one house, so stretch and buy a big one". So you did stretch and you bought a house with a Rs. 50,00,000 loan. Good congratulations. You are sure you could repay Rs. 45000 per month as an EMI and so you got the loan papers. You realised that the EMI actually comes to about Rs 52,000 including some term insurance premium adjusted over the life of the loan. You were wondering where the remaining Rs 7000 will come from, but did not bother too much.When you went to housing finance company for the loan, you were still wondering how to pay Rs 52000 per month. Then like God, the loan counter officer across the counter said, 'Sir you can reduce the EMI by increasing the tenor of the loan. That is a Wow moment for you. The angel did a quick calculation and said, 'Sir your EMI is Rs. 47,616, but the tenor will be 30 years. Your wife was cursing that there was no 40 year loan or you could have bought that 2bhk instead of the 1bhk hole in Mumbai that you bought for Rs. 72,00,000.What exactly happened? Well in a 20 year loan you were paying an EMI of Rs. 51609 - and the total interest that you would have paid over a 20 year period would have been Rs. 73,86,261. Whereas when you changed the tenor to 30 years, your EMI surely fell to Rs. 47,616 but since you are going to pay for a longer period, the interest paid will be Rs. 1,21,41,821. THUS THE INTEREST THAT YOU WILL PAY IS GOING UP BY Rs. 51 Lakh!Now by taking a big loan of Rs. 50 lakh you have that much less in your retirement corpus.Now by taking a loan of Rs. 50L you have given away the gift of compounding to your housing finance company instead of harnessing it yourself.- the interest that you pay is about 2.5 times the amount borrowed- the cost of your house at the end of 30 years is Rs. 2 crores (interest has to be added, right?)- what if the real estate does not appreciate by 11% per annum - the cost of your loan?- you cannot now argue that the house has appreciated so as to augment your retirement corpus- you will need a bigger term loan to cover the mortgage for a longer period.I am not trying to say do not borrow or do not borrow for a long tenure (bless your soul, I am a shareholder of HDFC and have been one for the past 35 years, so I love you for giving the compounding power to us).Just understand what you are doing is going to @#$%^&* up your retirement corpus.Then choose your priorities.