Marketing of housing loans

Abstract

A background study on the local property market and the macro-environment of the housing loan market is done to enhance the understanding of the subject and to aid the carrying out of the survey. A literature review is then carried out to analyse various techniques and strategies available for the marketing of financial services. Finally, one survey is constructed to collect data on the demographics of potential home buyers and their special preferences in relation to the features and benefits provided by a housing loan package. Another survey (interview or questionnaire) is used to find out banks' and other financial institutions' perception of customers' preferences in order to study the effectiveness of their present loan packages. A sample of 350 potential home buyers is chosen for the customer survey. They are requested to complete and return the questionnaires. Banks/finance companies are either interviewed or asked to complete the questionnaires. Interviews are used because of the comparative advantage that they offer. From our findings, we concluded that banks are mostly targeting at the mass market. Due to the high level of competition in the housing loan market, most housing loan packages are marketed along the same line and few are differentiated. Our attempt is thus to create a package that targets at the professionals, and is sufficiently different from those currently offered by most banks.