How long did it take you to pay down your housing loan/What age do you plan to pay off your housing loan? Do you make sure your loan(s) are fully repaid before retirement - e.g. 50s?

Stretch your housing loan if you view it as an investment to jump to another housing. Pay off your housing loan ASAP if you view it as your home for the remaining part of your life.

Thanks for all your replies...really appreciate the power of your sharing/experiences! There are 2 schools of thought (not right or wrong I feel), just different perspectives (very helpful indeed).

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1) To pay off asap, can focus on financing 2nd ppty/investment, save on loan interest (limits/drain cashflow/potential for OA to grow)

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2) Pay off as slowly as possible as HDB loan is good debt, use the monies to invest and earn yield loan interest. I.e. Service mortgage while saving up for investments/retirement, power of compounding/greater cashflow (effectively it's like indirect borrowing to invest, however loan interest expense higher than 1) Or can also use money to top up MA/SA (to reach FRS - i.e. build on retirement first)

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Actually I am thinking because if you go to the HDB website and log on, you can stimulate how much loan interest (HDB loan) is saved if you make lump sum (min. 5K) repayment to HDB loan. I tried and note that by paying down $5K (cash/CPF) now - I save on loan interests est. $2K. Hence the question.

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Actually a 3rd way is probably do a combination of 1 and 2! Hahaha - not easy but also a viable way.

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Would be cool if Seedly does a comparison article one day!

I haven't purchased my own house. But based on hearsay from financial gurus, it seems better to pay off the loan over as long as possible duration. The reason is due to inflation and opportunity cost. Basically, for example, you borrow SGD 1000 today and pay 100 SGD per year over 10 years, but the 100 SGD at the later year is actually worth 110 SGD due to inflation but you are still paying 100 SGD at the later year. Second, if you immediately return the 1000 SGD, that 1000 SGD could have been invested and earned more returns than the loan + interest.

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In short, assuming you locked in the interest rate of housing loan, it would be better to pay over long period of time. Having said so, this current time is THE WORSE TIME TO GET LOAN. So I personally won't even get a hdb now.

Under hdb can be considered good debt and slowly