Deferred EMI offers-Smoking mirrors or something more?

To offset the slowdown in sales, many developers have lately introduced no EMI or deferred EMI offers. The thought of not having to pay interest, especially in this high interest rate environment, is certainly tempting. However, despite such offers, only some of these projects are attractive investment options. In this blog post, I will describe the steps you need to go through, as an investor, to analyse the attractiveness of such offers. Read more

Expanding rental yields –silver lining to a lackluster market?

In deteriorating markets, it is easy to fall prey to extreme pessimism. Amidst falling sales volumes and stagnant prices, might some of us have overlooked a strong buy trigger in the Delhi and Gurgaon residential markets? Look closely and you will notice that over the past 12 months, rental yields have been expanding quickly in Delhi and Gurgaon is catching up fast. In this post, I will attempt to address the following three topics:

1. What influences rental yields?
2. Rental yields even across the metros are low. Why is that?
3. Is rental yield a lagging indicator to appreciating capital values?

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Emerging trends in Indian Real Estate and how you can benefit

Smaller apartments-don’t confuse lower TCO with lower prices

Better late than never! That’s how I would like to sum up this all important trend that finally appears to be taking root in Indian RE. Over the last few years (2003-2007), there has been significant supply of larger than average (>2000 sq ft) apartments across all the major metros and the adjoining suburbs. Whilst this supply was quickly lapped up over the first few years, there appears to be a supply overhang of large apartments because of an unaffordable Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). TCO for an apartment may be arrived at by multiplying size of apartment with price psf of apartment. The TCO needs to come down if developers want to address the needs of a larger section of the market. Read more

Soft launch (Pre-sales) v/sHard launch v/s Resale

In the next three posts on this blog, I will attempt to weigh the pros and cons of the three buying categories or options available to you as an investor, namely, soft launch, hard launch and resale. In this post, I will attempt to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of soft launch. Read more

Is the NCR real estate market in a bubble?

Maybe, this should have been the very first topic I should have addressed on this blog. Better late than never. Over the last 6 months, the media has written a lot about the high RE prices across major metros in India. Infact, there have been several people in the media and industry who have described the Indian RE market as a bubble. I will try and examine this assertion through this writing. I will focus on the NCR for the purposes of this blog. Read more