Today, home loans have been restructured to suit your constantly changing needs starting with a basic loan to buy a home, to loans required for construction or for repairing your existing home. In addition to these, featured below are a few other kinds of loans available.

Home Extension Loan
You could avail of this loan if you want to build a floor or expand it but only after you obtain the requisite approvals from the municipal and town authorities.

Home Improvement Loans
External work like structural repairs or waterproofing and internal work like tiling, plumbing, electrical work painting, flooring, etc., remains to be done even after you've bought the house. This is when a home improvement loan comes in handy.

Home Conversion Loans
Simply put, this loan enables you to transfer your current loan (which you took to buy your house) to the new house, thereby providing you with additional finances for the incremental cost of the new house. Which means, you can move to your new house without having to pre-pay your existing loan?

Land Purchase Loan
If you've opted to invest in land instead of buying a flat in town, you could apply for a land purchase loan. You could later apply for a construction loan separately to build your dream home on the land.

Stamp Duty Loan
This is extended against the stamp duty amount payable on your purchase of a house. This particular loan could be worth considering, especially in cities like Delhi and Mumbai where Real Estate prices are on the high side and the stamp duty payable is substantial.

NRI Loans
Loans today are available not only to Resident Indians but also to NRI's - if they wish to buy or construct a house in India. But for an NRI the documentation required is different. He/she would have to submit his/her work permit (where applicable), stamped visa on the passport, employment contract, latest salary slip and overseas bank statement of the past few months. Repayment of the loan could be done through the normal banking channels using either a Non-Resident (external) or a Non-Resident (ordinary) account.

Bridge Loans
In short, bridge loans are short-term finance loans that cover the period till you sell off your old house. To elaborate slightly, supposing you plan to buy a new house (which you've already found) and want to sell the one you're currently living in but are unable to find a buyer, a bridge loan proves useful. Repayment of a bridge loan can be done through a lump sum or in installments.

Refinance Loan
This simply means that a housing finance company gives you a home loan to repay your earlier debt. But the condition is that the earlier debt shouldn't be over six months. A refinance loan therefore works out cheaper when your present house has entailed a borrowing from other sources such as friends, provident funds, etc.

Balance Transfer (Swap)
A balance transfer loan is really useful when interest rates fall even as you're still repaying your home loan. And if you've opted for fixed-interest-rate repayment terms, you'll be paying a higher rate of interest. What you could do is get your existing loan refinanced (usually by another finance company). The new lender will repay your existing loan and give you a new loan at the current, lower rate of interest. You might have to face a pre-payment penalty on your old loan, but it will be worth it if the new EMI (based on the new, lower interest rate) ensures sufficient savings.