Ay yay yay PAGIBIG!

March 26, 2009 · Filed under Bear with Me

I applied for a housing loan with the Pagibig fund early this year and I had a very unpleasant experience with them. It started when the appraiser reported that I cannot borrow the total amount of the house I wanted to buy because based on my income tax return, I wouldn’t be able to pay for it. This caught me off guard. How come another buyer who works as a messenger at a pharmaceutical company was loaned the whole amount for his house while I cannot? I was approved for only 25% of the amount I was applying for.

As  physicians, our practice is considered a business,  a sole proprietorship so we are allowed to declare all our overhead expenses. Although I do not actually pay rent and electricity, I have to buy my vaccine, the syringes I use, cotton balls, etc. I also attend lots of unsponsored conferences to update myself. I pay for gas to go to my clinic, to the hospital. I had to replace the earpiece of my stethoscope because it’s torn already. I have to buy new books, again to update myself. And I am allowed to declare all that as an expense of my business.  There is also the depreciation of all the clinic’s assests. This is really all about accounting but what does it all boil down to? From what I understand, the net income that appears at the end of my ITR plus the depreciation is already my savings. It means that if my net income is for example Php 50,000 and the depreciation is php 190,000 then my savings is Php 240,000 for 1 year which is the amount that they should be considering for my loan application. From that, using the table that Pagibig Fund provided, I am eligible for a loan amount if Php 800,000 which is actually the amount I was trying to loan not the 25% they are loaning me.

My developer asked for an explanation fo this and asked for their guidelines in cases like mine about a month ago. Earlier today,  someone from Pagibig called me to tell me that upon reevaluation of my loan application, adding the depreciation, I am now approved for the amount of Php 800,000. WHAT? Upon reconsideration??? They should have approved the same amount in the very first place, no reevaluationtion needed. I was even insulted when I told the lady I was talking to that “kasama naman kasi talaga dapat yung depreciation di ba?” and she answered me with “kung may background ka sa accounting, simple lang naman yun eh”. Huh? Wala nga naman akong background sa accounting so hindi ko sya maiintindihan. But did she answer my question? No, she only evaded it. Maybe she also does not have a background in accounting. Does this mean that  my colleagues (who will also be applying for a housing loan from them) will also not be approved? The lady said that if they do not declare their income, they will not also be approved. Ibig sabihin, hindi pala ako nag-declare ng tamang income ko? Hmm… naging BIR pa sila ngayon.

Applying for a loan from the Pagibig Fund is too complicated. If I had known this, I would’ve just loaned from a private bank. I just wanted to use my HMDF contributions that is why I applied for a loan from them. It seems that Pagibig is only for employees and rich business owners not for a simple business owner like me. If that is the case then contributions to the fund should not be compulsory. Otherwise they should have definite guidelines on how to deal with borrowers like us. Or is this just an overview on the part of the evaluators? If that is the case then they should have said so and shut up to save face  instead of saying a lot of things that makes them look more like id***s.