The cash strapped realty companies can have a breather in budget for 2011-12 as the Finance Minister is expected to make announcement of a guarantee corpus for banks on realty lending. Track2Realty has learnt that the banks will get this guarantee corpus of Rs. 1000 crore to lend for housing projects.
I am relatively dissatisfied with the budget focus on the sector as no efforts made to the growth of the sector. My wish list to the Finance Minister is to relax the provisioning norms of banks for Real Estate loans, sector status to real estate, clarity on service tax & VAT, with some relaxation and to increase the interest exemption on Housing loan. But then the Finance Minister has not consulted the industry representatives in the last few years.
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In what real estate experts see as a sign that land rates are becoming more realistic, a 135-acre plot that belonged to the defunct PAL-Peugeot auto company in Dombivli has been auctioned off to Metropolitan Infra Housing Pvt Ltd (a subsidiary of Gammon India) for Rs 601 crore.
With liquidity from traditional channels like banks and equity markets drying up for property developers, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) have raised rates for loans to real estate companies by two-three percentage points (200-300 basis points). The rates have gone up from 15-19 per cent to 17-22 per cent. The rates vary according to the developer, the project and the requirement of the company, say NBFCs and consultants.
The Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India has expressed concern over “painting” the ‘loan-for-bribe’ as a scam. It says such negative projection would lead to drastic reduction in credit for real estate companies.