Prepayment Penalty is a nightmare that is suffered by the individual borrowers who take home loans for buying apartments. A prepayment loan generally means that all debts have to be paid before the due date. Prepayment penalty usually ranges between 1% or 5% on the total loan taken depending on the bank.

The NHB (National Housing Bank) sent out a notice to all the HFCs (Housing Finance Company) recently to levy any prepayment charges. This decision has been greatly applauded by the RBI (Reserve Bank of India). The ban is not only levied on the prepayment of the floating rate home loans but also the borrowers of the fixed rate home loan schemes

However, if you have taken a Prepayment Loan you just need to follow a few simple rules. Here’s a look at them

Rule #1 Negotiation With Your Bank

Before transferring your home loan, do let your bank know regarding why you have planned to pay your loan beforehand. If the EMI on your home loan is unaffordable to you or the interest rate is sky high, then the bank might grant you certain options like extension in tenure, partial repayment or a relaxation in the home loan EMI.

Rule #2 Switching to a Floating Rate Scheme From a Fixed rate Loan

Some of the borrowers let you choose a floating scheme of payment if you are finding a difficulty in paying your home loan. The floating loan scheme comes 1 or 2 percent cheaper than the fixed rate loan scheme.

Rule #3 Partial Prepayment

If the pre-play is taking a toll on your budget and the interest rate is too high for you to pay up; talking to the bank is always an option. The bank can allow you to make partial prepayments and lower the principal amount; they can also reduce the outstanding loan amount. Many banks have the option of a partial prepayment of the loan, which does not exceed 25% of the total loan amount.

Rule #4 Prepayment of the Home Loan from Your Source

In case you decide to go for a full loan prepayment or opt for a foreclosure with own funds, no penalty amount will be levied on you. These funds can be a maturity of bonuses from sale of assets and employment or life policies.

Home Loan is a major source of fund when you buy a property. The Home Loan EMI or the interest rate varies from one bank to another. Hence, it is very necessary to plan and choose an interest rate or an EMI or a home loan prepayment.

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This article aims at collating and providing information for benefit of ApnaComplex customers and blog readers. While ApnaComplex has taken every care to ensure the information is accurate, we suggest to please use it only as a guidance for further discussion and action with help of relevant professionals.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trail as well so that you can try before you buy!

Having your own home is definitely a priority in life. One of the first impressions while buying a home is that it should be large and spacious and that can burn a hole in your wallet. You start compromising on your shopping, partying and other luxuries when you plan to buy a spacious apartment.

However, when you actually move in to your new place with all the furniture and other storage boxes, the house looks crammed up. Figuring out the right places to store all the old and unwanted items is definitely a challenge. Following are some useful tips on how to effectively make your house more spacious.

Placement of Furniture

The furniture needs to be in the perfect place to efficiently partition a room into two. For example, you can use a big wardrobe to separate a large room into two, which will offer more privacy. A kitchen platform is a nice way of dividing an entire kitchen into a cooking space and a separate dining space.

Storage Space

You can always reduce the storage area by keeping all the container boxes and seasonal items below the beds or underneath the furniture. Buy beds or tables which have drawers or storage spaces in them. You can use shelves and hooks behind the doors or wardrobes to hang your clothes.

Colors and Paints

Using pastel and light colors makes your room look bigger. For better illusion you can use colors like cream, yellow, icy blue and white. Dark colors absorb most of the lights and hence make the room look darker. You can paint your room with light vertical paints to give a high rise look.

Natural Light

Avoid placing big furniture in front of the windows; it blocks the natural light from entering the room. It is always advisable to install high rise windows at your such as French windows to give your room a more spacious look. Don’t clutter up your window sill if you have smaller windows.

Installing Adequate Mirrors in Your House

Placing a mirror in your apartment makes it look more spacious. A mirror reflects both artificial and natural light. Using cabinets, which have mirrors, can be used to store a lot of small stuff. You should keep the mirror at a place where light falls on the mirror.

Electronic Goods

Making use of electronic goods can clutter up your home space a lot. Take optimum care when you plan to place the TV or the LCD in some room. Laptops are more useful than that of personal computers.

Interior Décor

The walls should not be cluttered up with many photo frames and pictures. Using one or two pictures on the wall is a better option. Feng Shui or Vaastu Shaastra can be implemented in your place to bring in a good ambience to your apartment.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!
ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

While setting up your house, remodeling the kitchen according to your need is an important factor. Eco-friendly updates to the kitchen are some of the best ways of reducing power and using the entire workspace. Transforming the kitchen into an eco-friendly one leverages the value of your apartment and also helps in conserving the environment. There can be a whole lot of aspects that can be kept in mind while upgrading your kitchen.

A kitchen can be easily made into an eco-friendly one by using many energy-saving equipments and appliances such as water-saving faucets, eco-friendly lighting and energy efficient windows.

Ventilation and Natural Light

You can save unnecessary wastage of electricity and save power by working closer to skylights and windows. By setting up your kitchen that way, you save a great amount of light. If your kitchen is not well ventilated and does not receive a good amount of light, then you should opt for LED or CFL bulbs. Installing an exhaust fan in the kitchen is very necessary; it fans out the entire bad odor in your kitchen and does not let the fumes stay. This in turn increases the amount of fresh air in the kitchen and removes any dampness. Using daylight controllers and energy efficient bulbs is a great way to save energy from being used.

Making use of Energy-Efficient Appliances

Energy consumption depends a lot on the appliances that are being used. Usually, new appliances always come with more efficient energy-saving technology than their previous counterparts. All modern electronic appliances use considerably very less amount of energy than the older equipments. All the Energy Star appliances use less energy and are more efficient to operate.

Cooking at a Time

Instead of cooking many times, try cooking once. Multitasking while cooking such as cutting vegetables can help you save a lot of fuel and time. Cutting of vegetables into small pieces increases the taste of the dish you are cooking and at the same time also cuts down the preparation time. The USP of cooking at a time is that you save a lot of fuel.

Choosing Cookware

Be choosy while buying your utensils; do not just go for the cheap ones as they increase you cooking time. Low quality utensils take time to heat up and hence consume huge amount of fuel or gas. Try not to use disposable products as they are made of low-quality cast iron, which affects your cooking process.

Adopting a Green Living

Keeping a separate dust bin for recyclable and non-recyclable wastes will help you do your bit for the environment too.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

ApnaComplex organized the Oota from Thota event on Sunday, 8th Jan, 2012 at Electronic City, Bangalore and here is the participants perspective of the event.

There was a sizable crowd of green enthusiasts with personal passions of greenery, gardening, no-plastic, organic farming and community well-being, bonding together through a common thread on this platform. Delighted to see participants coming from far distances such as Hanumant Nagar to attend the event and that’s true passion!

The pace got set with a talk from Dr.Viswanath of Garden City Farmers Trust – who presented some hard facts on the kind of food that we eat today. The dangers of consuming pesticides-ridden food taking their toll over a period of time was emphasized to create awareness. Though the speech was an eye-opener, all hope was not lost yet. Be it a terrace or a balcony, Dr. Viswanath & Laxminarayanan, also from Garden City Farmers Trust, showed the basic steps of planning for a garden, soil, grafting, seeds, seasonal plants etc. Pictures and success stories were shared on how even amateurs grew their own vegetables like capsicum and brinjal and fruits like the papaya and grapes in as little as 2ft by 2ft by 2ft space.

Following this, was another inspiring session from the Ms.Vani Murthy, another go-green expert who gave an actual demo of the materials that can be segregated in our day-to-day rubbish from our homes. Simple things like dry leaves, vegetable peels that can be separated out and mixed with soil and shredded newspapers to create nutrient-filled compost for plants. The difference between recyclable and reusable materials was also spelt out for the rapt audience.

The way the questions and queries from the audience till the very end were answered reflected the passion of the speakers.

Finally there were the packed stalls relevant to the theme of the day. Kids and their family thronged to the tasty organic chaat and snacks stall put by In the Pink. Then there was the unique and surprising flavours of homemade jam from Nature in a Bottle that teased your taste buds – you couldn’t resist taking home a bottle or two. For those looking to start their own kitchen garden, they were spoilt for choice of the garden tools and instruments, and exotic seeds by Varsha Enterprises. There was on display and sale, a variety of very informative and cost effective composting products and solutions from “Daily Dump” right from offices to homes to communities. Also present was Opron Biotech providing digital diagnostic equipment such as Thermometers, Blood Pressure Devices.

All-in-all a very satisfying and different way to spend a Sunday – one small step for the conscientious citizen. Heartening to see the pockets of change and hoping that this cascades into the right direction for Bangalore and rest of the world.

The event was supported by Garden City Farmers Trust, Celebrity Paradise Layout and Citizen Matters along with ApnaComplex.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

New Year’s eve provides a wonderful occasion for apartment complex residents to throw a party where people can get together and welcome a new beginning. To usher the new year in style, the party needs to be properly planned.

A New Year party is always a unique and fun experience as there’s a widely prevalent sense of expectation around. This is because every single person in the room looks forward to what the New Year’s got to offer, so a well planned party can provide the perfect stimulus to kick-start the year in a joyous mood.

Party Planning Tips for the New Year

A well organized party depends more on what is done before the party than during it. Here are certain tips that could help you in being well prepared while throwing an awesome new year’s party.

Come Up With Invites

You need to be sure of who are the invitees for your party. After making a list of the guests you need to send them invites in the form of mails or E-invites. Word of mouth may not be the preferred mode of inviting.

Fix the Menu

You need to plan the menu for the party in advance. Also, you have to decide if you are going to serve alcohol during the night. Many apartment complex parties do feature alcohol, although the residents are instructred to go easy on the same.

A little bit of alcohol can help in keeping the proceedings fun and your friends tipsy, so moderation is key here. Make sure that you arrange for both vegetarian and non vegetarian food in order to cater to both sections of people in your apartment complex.

It also makes sense to place the vegetarian dishes in one end at a separate table and the non vegetarian dishes at the other end, with labels  for the same. It is best to buy your provisions in advance by 2 or 3 days. Stock up on your beverages, snacks and other non perishable items that are part of your mini menu for the night of the party.

Amp Up the Music

Since your party is going to be a long one it is nice to have music playing to keep your guests in celebration mood. You could prepare your playlists well in advance so that you might not have to do it on the night of the party.

It is very important to ensure that there is not a single dull moment in your party. You can involve your guests in playing party games. Kids could have their own games like guessing others’ resolutions or word games with “Happy New Year” while adults can engage themselves in charades or bench games like move off my bench.

Be sure to plan something special when the clock strikes twelve. This could be as simple as ballons with confetti bursting over the party floor or a special performance to mark the start of a new year. Most importantly, do remember to have your share of fun at the party as well.

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

As the year end comes , we just recieved great testimonial from Mr. Ganesh Raja, treasurer of Ittina Abby, a 200+ unit society in Bangalore who have been using ApnaComplex for past 6 months now. Below is the testimonial:

Gone are the days of Maintaining Excel sheets and reconciling the same for Expenses made … Gone are the Days of having a home grown solution that crashes or have sleepless nights thinking about a Hard Disk crashes… ApnaComplex has really revolutionized facility maintenance all the way from collecting Maintenance to spending it. We at ITTINA ABBY are so happy and yesterday also a resident was saying how easy it is to use it and they never have to come to the Treasurer’s office for anything.

Great Team who is always ready to hear our problems and offer a solution even if it means more work for them. Always there to correct mistakes made by our Facility Manager, Support is so important for a System like this and the Team at Apnacomplex have understood that very well.

Kudos to the team and hope to see them enhance this more as we roll into 2012. — Ganesh, Treasurer ITTINA ABBY LBS Nagar Vimanapura PO”

Thank you Mr. Ganesh for your kind words!! We are so happy to receive these words from you!

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Want to ease your (or your treasurer’s) burden? – Get on to ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners way lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

Recently Kamal Co-operative Housing Society, Mumbai went live on ApnaComplex. The society has moved all thier accounts into ApnaComplex and for the first time issued digital invoices and receipts to its members. Mr. Hemang Thakker, Hon. Treasurer of the society was very pleased with the many positive comments from their members and has the following to say on ApnaComplex –

“We were on the lookout for an accounting software for our society for quite some time. We zeroed in on Apnacomplex as the site is well designed and featured all the things one looks for in a good software AND offered a no-obligation one month free trial.

The best part is that ApnaComplex delivers what it promises. I am very happy to say that all the doubts, queries and issues raised by us were addressed promptly and in a very positive manner. And as new features are being added the whole experience becomes richer.

We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship and would recommend the program whole heartedly.”

Thank you Mr. Thakker for your kind words!

In a first for any Housing Society Software – ApnaComplex launches a new module – Bio-metric Attendance Tracking* to track attendance of apartment and layout maintenance staff using a bio-metric finger print scanner.  The module is tightly integrated with the Staff Management Module providing an integrated, comprehensive view of all staff details inside the portal. Following are highlights of  this new module:

• Track attendance of maintenance staff through finger print reader
• View Attendance Reports of Maintenance Staff on daily basis, monthly basis etc.
• Get to know the amount of time spent outside of the complex
• Enables Society to easily calculate the payroll based on the attendance
• Manually over-ride the attendance records as per need
• Ability to manually insert attendance records to handle missed swiping cases
• Ability to handle multiple devices installed in a location

*This is an optional  module and is enabled only with hardware purchase.
Reach out to us to get specifications of the hardware and quote.

ApnaComplex now supports the most flexible automation of  recurring invoices. Any invoice that is raised periodically can now be automated.

ApnaComplex, in the recurring invoice module, till now had the ability to automate generation of invoices for a given set of charges for all flats. The charges could be based on a flat rate or per square feet basis. However, Treasurers who use complex formulae for maintenance charges (such as Rs. 1000/- for 2BHKs, Rs. 3000/- for 3 BHK or Rs. 2/- pfst of built up area + Rs. 1/- of terrace) or have additional charges to be posted for few flats (such as parking lot rentals for few members) were not able to benefit from the recurring invoice module.

Bringing a smile on the lips of these treasurers, ApnaComplex now supports raising of invoices periodically based on charges uploaded via spread sheet. Create the charges to be invoiced periodically in a spreadsheet and set up the invoicing schedule! Invoices will automatically get posted based on the schedule. With this treasurers can automate the posting of different amounts against different units and also different charges against different units.

Go to Member Income dashboard and click “Setup Recurring Invoices” to see this in action!

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Get your Society on ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!