Ravi Sinha: I welcome all the panelists in this roundtable discussion. We are organizing the brain storming session for our inaugural yearly Handbook Focus 2012. This is the second of the series after the 1st discussion in Mumbai on “Funding Gap in Real Estate.”
If you look the FDI side of the story over the years, initially there was an influx of a lot of foreign funds and in 2007, it was driven by the US. But the 3-4 years that investors have been here, we have seen a lot of selling. So a lot of investors withdrew or reduced their portfolio and even though being a fund, we found ourselves putting our hands into the acquisitions, marketing etc. It was not our comfort zone and we have been playing the role of a developer instead.
Sunil Dahiya: When the meltdown of 2008 and the aftereffects of 2009 rolled in, see the amount of letters sent by developers to the customers and the customer calling back and telling that ‘sorry boss, I am on the verge of losing my job, I don’t have the money’. Not a single developer went to any court or had any power in this judicial system to recover any payment from the consumer, there is no law.
Ravi Sinha: Sachin, if I come back to the topic of consumer redressal, isn’t it true that lack of clarity in policy leads to consumer blackmailing also in cases like CCI against DLF. How do you see that?
Sachin Sandhir: When the Government talks about affordable housing and expects the developers to do affordable housing, it is a misnomer because the Government is the first perpetuator of price escalation by auctioning the land to the highest bidder. Then to expect the developer to not make a profit of 50-60 per cent or whatever his expectation, is unrealistic.
Track2Realty Roundtable-IV Venue—India Habitat Centre Moderator—Ravi Sinha, CEO & Managing…
Track2Realty Roundtable-III Venue—India Habitat Centre Moderator—Ravi Sinha, CEO & Managing…
Ravi Sinha: You mean to suggest the land acquisition bill has not really been deliberated upon and came as a knee jerk reaction?
Ravi Sinha: To sum up the discussion, what kind of funding do you see emerging in the coming year?
Sunil Dahiya: What is happening is that we imported certain professionals from other industries and somewhere the vision and mission of the promoter was fueled by their greed or professionalism. They called it financial engineering. And that was the reason we got blocked from the IPO market. Today, whoever has filed DRHP, is going to face so much scrutiny and the band value itself will be discounted by 30%.