Diary of a real estate journalist
“Does real estate have a toxic positivity problem?” This is not the headline of any Indian media but of their global counterpart. It catches my attention as I have always felt the same in the Indian context as well. It is quite obvious that the toxic problem of positivity and labelling realistic voices as “negative” is not just India-specific problem with the given business. Real estate the world over believes in a false narrative of “all is well”, and this mindset leads to more cost & peril than benefit.
The Indian media by and large has been parroting the lines of the real estate stakeholders only. The absence of critical questions has as much to do with the journalistic impropriety as with the deep-rooted behavioural flaw of ignoring, negative labelling and even silencing with threats. And hence, all that one finds in the media space is toxic positivity; something that doesn’t resonate with the buyers.
A recent report claims current sentiment index score of Indian real estate is 72. I wonder how! Who is going to believe this? Definitely not the home buyers at the receiving end of the builders with delay, default, unmet promises and what not. But this is not an isolated instance of one-odd such report. As a matter of fact, most of the reports by the brokerage firms (in the guise of consulting firms) and other industry stakeholders would like the home buyers to believe that if you don’t buy property now, you would be left behind. This unnecessarily creates a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in the minds of the gullible buyers.
Beyond these misleading marketing tactics, the question is who all are the respondents of such surveys? Isn’t it only industry stakeholders and not the buyers? This is because the buyers have a different story to tell in the Indian property market; something that goes unheard more often than not.
As a matter of fact, Track2Realty consumer sentiment survey finds that the C-SAT (Consumer Satisfaction) score of Indian home buyers is only 26% after all those glorified reforms, most notably RERA.
The industry statistics more often than not conceal more than reveal the actual demand & supply dynamics. For instance, the absolute data of millions of sq feet commercial spaces absorption doesn’t reveal how many occupants have just shifted from old buildings to the new ones. In the absence of overall vacancy figure, one is served with only one dish that is delicious – absorption. Same is the story with the sales data of residential units, based on the number of property registration. It doesn’t reveal whether the transactions have been with fresh supply, or resale, or worse even distressed deals.
It often makes me wonder as to why can’t real estate stakeholders be honest about a difficult market and difficult business. Isn’t it a fact that real estate business is far more complicated than any other business, for various reasons?
The fact is that the industry stakeholders have repeatedly hurt their cause with misplaced optimism. For example, during the Union Budget no wishes of the sector are fulfilled because they are loud enough in advance to claim “All is Well”. Why would policy makers bother about a booming business? It is better to fulfill the wish list of those businesses where there is crisis.
Won’t it help the real estate business if they are honest with themselves at least, if not the buyers? But no! All is well and even if it is not well there is a collective conspiracy of information blackout. Information blackout has hurt more than helped the sector at every level. I wonder how come the industry narrative is all about transparency.
But then if a media questions it, it is labelled as spreading negativity. Media is always negative to the sector, as they say. A few years ago, the industry body CREDAI came up with a brilliant (sic) idea that the developers should stop advertising with the media that publishes “Negative” (read realistic) news stories. The idea had many takers among those developers who didn’t have urgency to sell, but for the large universe of the developers sitting over piles of unsold inventory it was business as usual with the media.
Then there are other developers who with their ill-gotten money landed upon an ill-gotten island of ego to teach the journalists a lesson or two for their failure to ask a sweet question, get a sweet answer and file a sweet story. A number of ill-conceived defamation cases here and there could only dent their own brand than causing trouble to the dare devil journalists who refuse to glorify the builders.
And so, toxic positivity problem continues with the real estate business, even though it hurts both the builders as well as the buyers. It is the time of introspection for the real estate stakeholders. The toxic positivity problem has only compounded their challenges over a period of time.
Ravi Sinha
#RaviTrack2Media
Ravi Sinha is a journalist with over two decades of cross-discipline media exposure. He is the CEO of real estate thinktank group Track2Realty. He has been writing extensively on the real estate sector for more than a decade now. Evaluation of real estate brand performance is his core domain expertise and he has immense insight into consumers’ psychograph. He has conceptualised Track2Realty BrandXReport as India’s 1st & only objective & non-paid brand rating journal that is industry-accepted benchmark of brand equity & ranking of the Indian real estate companies.
Track2Realty is an independent media group managed by a consortium of journalists. Starting as the first e-newspaper in the Indian real estate sector in 2011, the group has today evolved as a think-tank on the sector with specialized research reports and rating & ranking. We are editorially independent and free from commercial bias and/or influenced by investors or shareholders. Our editorial team has no clash of interest in practicing high quality journalism that is free, frank & fearless.
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