Stocks of real estate companies suffered widespread losses on the BSE today dragging down the sectoral index by 3.14 per cent on all-round selling by funds on fears of rate hike by RBI to curb inflation.
Entrepreneur Robert Vadra, married into the country’s most powerful family, has made a quiet and relatively unheralded entry into the real estate business, including a partnership with DLF Ltd, the market leader in the business.
Times Realty India 2011, a two-day exhibition being held in Dubai on the realty sector of India opens today in Dubai. The exhibition will see participation from some of the biggest organizations in the property industry from India.
Shahid Balwa, a key figure in the telecom scandal that has shaken the government, has resigned as the head of his flagship real estate company, DB Realty. Balwa is vice-chairman of Gulf group Etisalat’s joint venture in the country and at 36 was the youngest billionaire on last year’s Forbes India rich list.
With only $400-500 million of foreign funds flowed into the Indian real estate sector in 2009-10, the outlook ahead seems to be far from being rosy.
The move to increase the priority housing loan limit to Rs 25 lakh was a positive one that will lead to increasing the base of home loan takers and thereby a boost for affordable housing.
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 would say I am relatively dissatisfied with the focus of budget on realty sector in the last ten years. Our expectations have never been fulfilled and I now demand investments in infrastructure sector should be set as a priority, as good infrastructure is very necessary for the economic growth of the country.
Value and Affordable housing remains a segment where government should definitely continue to provide developers with tax free status which was available earlier. Rather than restricting it to unit sizes as in the past of 1,000 / 1,500 sft per housing unit, the government could instead have a maximum per unit value of say Rs. 15 lakhs for units near Tier I Cities, Rs. 10 lakhs for Tier II Cities.
The Reserve Bank of India has asked banks to put in place an escrow mechanism that can ring fence their loans to real estate firms and keep a closer tab on the end use of funds. The RBI has been looking to tighten the lending norms for the real estate sector after last year’s bribery-for-loan scam. The scandal also exposed several unethical practices, such as diversion of funds.