Track2Realty: The global house price boom continues, with a new geographical twist. Housing markets surged during the year to Q2 2014 in Dubai, parts of Europe and the Pacific. In contrast, several Asian governments have implemented cooling measures, successfully restraining their housing markets, and the US housing market boom is weakening.
Track2Realty: While real estate is a constantly changing and evolving concept, some parameters remain constant – the three success mantras are still Location, Location and Location. In this respect, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (or PCMC) is an important chapter in the annals of Pune real estate’s success story.
Track2Realty: The global house price boom continued during the year to Q1 (first quarter) 2014, gathering pace. Despite strongly rising housing markets in Taiwan and the Philippines, the momentum seems to be passing momentarily from Asia, where interventionist authorities have slowed housing markets in Hong Kong, Singapore and China. Instead, action is shifting to the Pacific, the Gulf, and (less forcefully) to Europe, which are all seeing strong price rises.
Track2Realty: For the quarter ended March 2014, nearly US$800 million was invested into India’s real estate sector. This translates to almost Rs.4,800 crore having been injected into the sector through the private equity route over the past few months. This couldn’t have happened at a more opportune timefor a sector faced with a liquidity crunch, high land acquisition costs, and stringent due diligence from the banking sector—which continues to perceive real estate as a high-risk domain in India.
Track2Realty: 2013 was one of much economic turbulence. High retail inflation, high interest rates and a continuous fall in the rupee value, have been slowing the overall growth and have continuously hindered the investment sentiment in the market during the entire 2013.
Track2Realty Exclusive: A marginal rate cut/hike time again evokes reactions across the industries and the blame game continues where the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) defends its balancing act of controlling inflation and the industry captains slam its short term outlook of stop gap arrangement.
Track2Realty Exclusive-Yearly Analysis: Many of these cash-strapped developers may find it difficult to get bank loans as well. Bank lending is the single largest source of funding for developers, who require funds primarily for construction finance but also to service debt.
No end to the global housing market downturn is in sight, except probably in the US, according to a survey of global house price trends by the Global Property Guide Asia is weakening, and house price falls in the worst-hit European crisis countries are dramatically accelerating.
Anticipating a significant rate cut by the RBI, disappointed real estate community has ring alarm bells and forecast more slump due to the high interest rate regime. Pointing out that the capital and labour intensive sector plays a key role in employment generation and accelerating growth, industry body CREDAI says the government has also been losers of revenue due to neglect of the sector and risks attributed to real estate and the RBI advisories against lending to real estate have only harmed the sector and made housing costlier for consumers, apart from affecting the economy.
A White Paper on black money tabled in Parliament on Monday, May 21, has named real estate among others as most vulnerable to menace of black money. Given that land is part of the top black money generators, the white paper suggested that states could consider taxing farm income to curb black money.