
An overcautious year ahead for real estate sector-II
The office market is likely to observe steady demand, especially in prime locations in leading cities like NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
The office market is likely to observe steady demand, especially in prime locations in leading cities like NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Replicating global trends, the Indian economy is looking towards an impending slowdown in growth due to decline in consumption expenditure, repeated hikes in interest rates and consistently high inflation.
The country’s competition regulator is planning to initiate an investigation next week to find whether the practices for which it fined DLF Rs.630 crore on Tuesday are the norm at other real estate companies too.
It has always been axiomatic that when financial institutions raise their lending rates, there are bound to be ripples on the highly cost-sensitive Indian real estate market.
Real estate traditionally has always had the perception of being a sector where ‘land & buildings’ was the language required and ‘people skills’ were of no great relevance. But, now, even big Real estate players are soon beginning to understand the importance of effective ‘client servicing’, enhanced ‘team productivity’ and professional ‘managerial skills’.
Evaluation of the real estate brands has never been as challenging in India as it is now. After all, the large & listed real estate developers across the country are exhibiting identical patterns with their performance. Nearly all of them are witness to their best-ever fiscal topline as well as stock performance. The combined market share, fiscal performance and market cap of some 20-0dd listed real estate companies would be more than half the revenue of Indian real estate.
Call it influence peddling of the real estate stakeholders, or a thought-process that is culturally ingrained in the minds of the Indians, but the collective consciousness is made to believe that real estate investments are insulated against losses. Track2Realty questions the rationale. Real estate as an asset class has been oversold with the promise that you can never suffer losses with a physical asset, unlike stocks and mutual funds where an investor can suffer huge losses. To top it all, there is a general belief that real estate offers the best Return on Investment (ROI).
Some of the English dailies had come up with marvellous marketing idea, as they called it then, of barter deals which they thought was a win-win for both the media houses as well as the builders. They got into a barter deal where builder got crores of advertising space with the publication without a single rupee exchanging hands. In such deals, the media houses instead of advertising revenue got that much exchange value of property in the upcoming projects of these builders. Property supplements were launched by the mainline newspapers that violated all ethics of journalism to glorify the builders and their projects. Such was the clout of these builders that they even interfered in the editorial policies of these newspapers. They felt empowered & free to label the news copy and the journalists as negative, if they didn’t like a news item.
Whether one should have real estate in the portfolio of investments or not is an age-old debate. World over, it is as much a topic of discussion within the built environment of real estate as with personal finance. Arguments on both sides of the divide have their own merit, but the fact remains that there is no one size fits all answer. The personal finance pros believe that stock market & mutual funds reward are far greater in the range of 14-18% per annum. The real estate proponents, on the other hand, assert that real estate rewards are no less over a longer period of time, and it also saves the investors from the cyclic high market volatility. A Track2Realty report.
The report of a property consultancy firm about sizeable appreciation of properties and record demand for plots around upcoming Jewar Airport at Yamuna Expressway has yet again brought the spotlight back on properties closer to airports. Such reports tempts an average Indian looking for a property as an investment. Someone having option of only one property often fails prey to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) by such reports.