Time for real estate to get rational with budget
Finance Ministry officials maintain that budget wish list of developers…
Finance Ministry officials maintain that budget wish list of developers…
“I am reading these newspaper reports about the real estate sector demanding so many things with the Union Budget. Most of these demands are for their financial health than understanding the market from common homebuyers’ perspective like us. Do we matter at all in this eco system where neither the government nor the developers understand what keeps us away from the property market,” says Shweta Sanyal, an advertising professional in Mumbai.
When we talk about home buyers sitting on the fence, we are basically talking about buyers who want to buy a home but are indecisive. Implied therein is that such buyers have the capital to buy now if they choose to – they point is they are not choosing to.
Developers have their own expectations, because positive announcements for real estate buyers made during the budget will help increase the market sentiment, and therefore sales. The general hope is that the budget will provide cheer to intending homebuyers who have been deterred for various reasons.
With the prices virtually stagnant and the industry being plagued with an ever increasing inventory for sale the market is in a mode of a gradual downward drift. However, even though the city property market has been witness to stagnation, there is still hope in the last quarter of the fiscal year due to underlying factor that while the property prices in the city have increased only nominally, affordability has risen with rising salaries, lower interest rate and lower inflation.
There had suddenly been a deafening silence when the RBI Governor Dr Raghuram Rajan recently asked the real estate developers to reduce the home prices. However, the economist in Rajan was not making a faux pass. He could rather see a supply side of bubble in the making. Therefore, he came harsh on the sector.
To say that the year 2015 has not been very excisiting for the real estate market across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) would be stating the obvious. The slowdown in the macro-economy, wait & watch by the homebuyers in the property market, relatively higher cost of borrowing till late and fate of reforms oriented policies hanging in uncertainty all collectively dampenend the property market in India’s financial capital. Will the year 2016 be any different?
Today, the world sees India as a land of opportunity for business and investment. RBI head Raghuram Rajan said in mid-September that while fellow BRICs have deep problems, India appears to be an island of relative calm in an ocean of turmoil.
In many ways, the year 2015 was a defining one for the residential real estate segment in India. This was the period when the market began to evolve, along with customer expectations as well as market dynamics.
“How long can a sector survive which is borrowing at 48 per cent from private lenders to serve the interest of previous debt raised at much lower rate,” asks a banker. His concern is not without valid reasons. Developers experimented with all funding options but still many of them are now being forced to seek other sources of funding which not only comes at a significantly higher cost but also where the source of fund is unregulated.