HDFC Bank home loan fees and charges

The bank publishes five, and the spread between them is enormous. A salaried applicant or a self-employed professional pays up to 0.50% of the loan or ₹4,000, whichever is higher. A self-employed non-professional pays up to 1.50% or ₹5,000. The HDFC Reach scheme is charged up to 2.00% with no rupee floor at all.

On a ₹1 crore loan that is ₹50,000 at the salaried slab against ₹2,00,000 on Reach — and once 18% GST is added, ₹59,000 against ₹2,36,000. The difference between two borrower classifications at the same bank on the same day is ₹1.77 lakh. Any comparison table that prints a single processing fee for this lender is describing one applicant and calling it the bank.

Note also the "whichever is higher" construction on the percentage slabs. The rupee figure is a floor, not a cap: on small loans you pay the flat amount, and on everything above ₹8 lakh at the salaried slab the percentage takes over and keeps rising with the loan.

Every fee above is quoted by the bank as "plus applicable taxes". In practice that is 18% GST, and it applies to the processing fee, the conversion charges and the administrative charges alike.

The effect is not trivial. A ₹50,000 processing fee is ₹59,000 out of your account. A 1.50% fee on a ₹1 crore loan is ₹1.5 lakh before tax and ₹1.77 lakh after it. A comparison that puts a 0.50% lender next to a 1.50% lender without mentioning tax understates the gap by nearly a fifth.

This is why every fee figure on Credsir includes GST where the tax applies. It is not a refinement — for a self-employed borrower it is a five-figure sum that appears nowhere in a rate comparison.

Stamp duty, the memorandum of deposit of title deeds, and registration are set by your state government and are frequently the single largest cash line at sanction — on a metro purchase, several lakh. The bank does not keep them and cannot waive them. CERSAI registration is passed through at actuals up to ₹100, and legal and technical valuation at cost.

Then there are the servicing charges that only appear later. Bouncing an instalment costs ₹450. Failing to comply with a sanction condition — a document not filed, a security not perfected — attracts up to 2% a year on the principal outstanding, charged monthly until it is fixed, capped at ₹50,000 for critical security deferrals and ₹25,000 otherwise. That is a large penalty for administrative drift, and it is the one worth reading properly.

Rate conversion deserves particular attention, because it is the charge you are most likely to want to pay. Switching to a lower variable rate costs up to 0.50% of the principal outstanding or ₹3,000, whichever is lower, on the first conversion and ₹2,000 on later ones. That is cheap, and if your loan has drifted above the bank’s current card rate it is usually the fastest fix available — often cheaper than a balance transfer, which costs a fresh processing fee and new legal and valuation charges at the receiving lender.

HDFC Bank’s own schedule states that premature closure on an adjustable-rate loan, during the period the variable rate applies, is nil. That is not a concession — the RBI prohibits banks and housing finance companies from levying foreclosure charges or prepayment penalties on floating-rate term loans to individual borrowers.

It means a thirty-year floating-rate home loan is far less of a commitment than its tenure implies. If your rate drifts to the wrong end of the grid, or your credit profile improves after sanction, you can refinance elsewhere and pay nothing to exit. The cost of moving is entirely at the receiving end: their processing fee, their legal and technical valuation.

The protection does not extend to fixed-rate loans, where the bank publishes 2% plus taxes during the fixed period — waived where you prepay from your own sources rather than by refinancing. If a fixed rate is offered to you at an attractive number, price the exit before you accept it. You would be giving up the strongest protection the floating-rate borrower has.