Isn’t it ironic that in a country where housing shortage is at the core of policy debates, housing surplus in top Indian cities is juxtaposed to that. As a matter of fact, the reality of unsold housing units poses an even greater degree of imbalance than the housing shortage. But then unsold inventory is a symptom and not the cause of malaise in the housing market of the country. A Track2Realty report.
The report of an impending housing recession in the US housing market is a worrying factor for a section of analysts in India. As per the reports coming out of the US market, the pricing remains firm but the sales have slowed down. As per a report by the NAR (National Association of Realtors), the home sales have slowed down for six consecutive months in July. Track2Realty reports.
Freedom is a luxury and it means different things to different set of people. The stakeholders within the built environment of the Indian real estate too have their own set of definition when it comes to what defines their freedom. While for a home buyer, freedom is to have a rent-free house of one’s own at an affordable price, for the developers the quest has been freedom from multiple bottlenecks – single window clearance, industry status, easy funding and, most importantly, FSI free developments. Track2Realty investigates whether ‘Freedom From FSI’ would be boon or bane.
The real estate industry stakeholders are debating over the design changes and other functional changes in the housing projects after Coronavirus. An impression is gaining ground that the developers have the realization that the world has changed due to pandemic and they need to alter to fit into the buyers’ needs. An online poll by Track2Realty nevertheless finds that the industry is off the mark when it comes to read the pulse of the buyers. The buyers are not looking for knee jerk design changes but housing to have long term functional changes.
Much before the outbreak of pandemic Coronavirus, the Indian real estate sector battling with the consistent slowdown was looking up to the turnaround catalyst. While the success of REIT had given it a glimmer of hope, the fund managers had their eyes set on a segment that has the potential to not just spread across the country but give a piggy ride to other segments as well, most notably to the housing. Track2Realty finds the warehousing & logistics to emerge as the mainstream real estate in the last few years.
The statistics are scary for any salaried class across the cities of India who has an EMI to pay for his home purchase. The Indian Chamber of Commerce has estimated that the real estate would be witness to 65% defaults from the buyers of under construction projects due to Coronavirus hit lockdown. The estimation is not without its logical reasons. A CII snap poll of the CEOs finds that 52 percent of the companies surveyed foresee job losses, in their respective sectors.
According to the report titled “The Herald of a New Chapter: Student Accommodation in India”, the Student Housing/Co-Living space is expected to witness an investment worth USD 700 million and an addition of 0.6 million beds by 2023 across the country. The Student Housing segment is witnessing rapid growth across all the major markets in the country and expected to witness a growth of 36 percent between 2019 to 2023.
In the ‘golden years’ of India’s housing market, property was the default go-to option for big-ticket investment. With real estate’s fading allure, investors began exploring other options and found them to quite rewarding. For instance, they can invest in a start-up with sums as ‘low’ as INR 10 lakhs. Many entrepreneurially-inclined Indians find the potential ROI (as high as 15% in many instances) makes more sense. Mutual funds provide good returns and the entry level is low enough to be affordable to many.
It was not the magic wand it was hoped to be. However, over the past two years, the Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) has brought more sanity – and the return of consumer power – than seemed possible in such a short time. The real estate sector is still struggling with it and the Act is very much work-in-progress in many states, but RERA nevertheless hangs like a sword of Damocles over a previously unregulated industry. Eventual compliance across the board seems inevitable.
Only a paltry number of developers have built housing that meets the Government’s criteria for incentivized affordable housing in 2019. ANAROCK data reveals that of the total housing supply of 1,39,490 units in the top 7 cities H1 2019, merely 39,840 units meet these criteria. The Government’s recent Budget ‘bonanza’ of an additional INR 1.5 lakh tax deduction on interest repayment of home loans availed till March 2020 will benefit very few people in urban India.