Track2Realty Exclusive: Kruti Jain, Director, Kumar Urban Development, believes any funding available in real estate is gap funding. It is not about only the gap which is there in funding for real estate because what happens for other industries is that they have this reserve capital which is not their land or raw material, but is the actual capital they put in to manufacture xyz product and then they replenish the funds with whatever returns are accrued.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The realty market has been pretty exposed to the greedy investors and vulture funding, not venture funding. In desperation the developers often lost track of what kind of funding was required and met with the disaster. Amidst the cyclic very high and very low there has been off balance debt-equity ratio as well. Of late, some developers tried within the box and some outside it. The needs and solutions are different for listed and unlisted companies. Still the sector is in search of right funding mechanism and as Track2Realty finds, are guinea pigs in the funding market.
With overall vacancy increasing and business and investor sentiment low, why are office rents in many micro markets in Mumbai still increasing? In the recent past, many corporate decision makers have been wondering aloud why the rents and capital values in markets such as Lower Parel and BKC have risen in the last 4-5 months.
Over the last year, there has been an unequivocal crystallization of Indian cities that continue to attract serious investment into real estate. This is directly correlated to the economic dynamics now working in the country. If India is to achieve even a conservative GDP growth of 6% per year, it emerges that only three cities – Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore – have the potential to deliver. The reason for this is that close to 2/3rd of the overall development of office space in the country is now taking place in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
Sunil Dahiya: What is happening is that we imported certain professionals from other industries and somewhere the vision and mission of the promoter was fueled by their greed or professionalism. They called it financial engineering. And that was the reason we got blocked from the IPO market. Today, whoever has filed DRHP, is going to face so much scrutiny and the band value itself will be discounted by 30%.
Sunil Dahiya: Pranay, the most important thing is the background of the investor from the developer’s perspective. My understanding may be a little limited because I come form the Delhi NCR market and as you know, it is a very localized subject. But being in the governing council of NAREDCO at the national level, where Knight Frank is knowledge partner, one of the presentations that we had in 2008 with the idea that where the industry has lost its bearing and funding was the main agenda.
Pranay Vakil: Let’s start by introducing ourselves. I am Pranay Vakil, Chairman of Knight Frank India. We are a brokerage and consultancy group, positioned as second in the business.
It has been a difficult market to be in as a developer. Rising interest rates have impacted the customer interest in new properties moderating the flow of new funds and in addition to that high inflation and rising commodity prices have increased substantially the delivery cost for existing projects.
The PE players have expressed concern about difficulty in exits, governance issues in investee companies and certain taxes such as the Dividend Distribution Tax which are excessive and do not conform with global standards.
With the market set to bottom by out by the second quarter of 2012, we will see the beginning of a recovery in the city’s residential real estate fortunes by the second half of the year.