Indian property bubble

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A major office complex in Gurgaon DLF Gateway Tower.png
A major office complex in Gurgaon

The Indian real estate sector is collapsing due to increasing costs of financing. [1] Real estate projects in India take a long time to complete due to a complicated regulatory mechanism. Several of India's publicly traded real estate firms are in debt. [2] The inventory of unsold real estate assets is growing and it is expected the market will undergo price corrections. [3] According to the Mumbai-based market research agency, Liases Foras, 30% of the transactions in the real estate sector are done with black money. Experts expect new property prices to fall up to 50% in the next three months in Tier 1 cities. [4] [5]

Contents

In 2006, Himanshu Joshi, the Director of Monetary Policy Department, Reserve Bank of India, raised concerns about the rapid growth of the housing market and its sustainability. The paper said that the house prices in India were correlated more with interest rates and credit growth, and very little with the growth of real income. [6]

In a September 2013 interview, Venkatesh Panchapagesan, the Head of Century Real Estate Research Initiative, IIM, Bangalore, said that the weakening of the rupee and lack of credit in the sector would cause prices to fall. He also said the prices should be falling faster, but due to the lack of transparency in the sector, it is not doing so. [7]

Recent history

In March 2005, the Government of India permitted 100% foreign direct investment in construction and development projects. Before that only non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin were allowed to invest in the real estate sector. Foreign investors could only invest through wholly owned subsidiaries and partnerships with Indian firms. However, foreign investors were not allowed to hold land for speculative purposes. [8]

In July 2013, the Reserve Bank of India increased the bank rate by 200 basis points to 10.25%. This increased the cost of funds for the entire banking sector. [9]

In July 2013, the State Bank of India took ownership of a condominium project called Teen Kanya in Kolkata after the builder, Bengal Shelter, defaulted on 1.77 billion (US$22 million). About 400 people, who had paid up to 90% of the prices, found themselves in legal complications. [10] [11]

In August 2013, Orbit Corporation, a Mumbai-based real estate firm, defaulted on loans worths 96 crore (US$12 million) taken from LIC Housing Finance. [12] Orbit Corporation had taken a loan of 3.25 billion (US$41 million) from LIC Housing Finance and defaulted on dues worth 9.55 billion (US$120 million). [13]

On 14 August 2013, the RBI put various restrictions on the amount of funds individuals and companies can invest abroad, in a bid to protect the value of the Indian rupee. Among the restrictions was a ban on the purchase of real estate abroad. [14]

On 27 August 2013, the National Housing Bank, while presenting the quarterly update of the Indian housing index, Resider, that 22 of 26 indexed cities were seeing a fall in prices during the April–June period. [15] [16]

In September 2013, it was reported that about 650 million sq. feet of assets or about 6,00,000 housing units remained unsold at the end of June 2013, according to the research firm Liases Foras. Some builders were seen dropping prices and offering other incentives to buyers. [17]

In October 2013, the RBI issued an advisory to buyers and banks. It asked banks to release sanctioned individual housing loan amounts in phases linked to construction stages, instead of releasing the funds as a lump sum. The unlinked loans used to act as cheap credit for builders. Builders used to encourage buyers to put 20% of the price of the housing unit as downpayment and apply for the rest 80% as a loan. These were called were 80:20 or 25:75 schemes. This loan was used directly by the builder for construction. The builders would sometimes pay the interest on the loans for a period. The reason for this was that individual housing loans drew an interest rate of around 10%, whereas housing project loans attracted an interest rate of 18%. The RBI also said that using such schemes may affect the credit rating of the buyer and expose banks to higher non-performing assets. [18] [19]

In July 2015, LIC Housing Finance put up the Orbit Residency Park project of Orbit Corporation, in Andheri, Mumbai, for auction. It had a reserve price of 1.25 billion (US$16 million). [13]

In May 2016, Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) came into existence. RERA is considered to be as one of the landmark legislation passed by the Government of India for the betterment of real estate in India. The objective of Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, is to reform the Indian real estate sector, by encouraging greater transparency, accountability and financial discipline. [20]

The market size of the real estate sector in 2017 was US$120 billion which is expected to reach US$1 trillion by 2030. It is expected that the sector would have a contribution of 13% to the GDP of the country by 2050. [21] 2019 HDIL defaulted payment to PMC bank ILFS default 2018 RERA stringent provision 2019 NBFC like DHFL and India bull crises

Excellent performing Real Estate is a key to achieving higher sustainable growth rate, especially for the developing countries like India. Indian Property Bubble can be considered as the biggest obstacle that not only hindered the growth of real estate sector but slowed the overall growth of India. [22]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reserve Bank of India</span> Central bank of India

The Reserve Bank of India, chiefly known as RBI, is India's central bank and regulatory body responsible for regulation of the Indian banking system. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Finance, Government of India. It is responsible for the control, issue and maintaining supply of the Indian rupee. It also manages the country's main payment systems and works to promote its economic development. Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran (BRBNM) is a specialised division of RBI through which it prints and mints Indian currency notes (INR) in two of its currency printing presses located in Nashik, Dewas and Mysore. .RBIestablished the National Payments Corporation of India as one of its specialised division to regulate the payment and settlement systems in India. Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation was established by RBI as one of its specialised division for the purpose of providing insurance of deposits and guaranteeing of credit facilities to all Indian banks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ICICI Bank</span> Indian private sector bank

ICICI Bank Limited is an Indian multinational bank and financial services company headquartered in Mumbai. It offers a wide range of banking products and financial services for corporate and retail customers through a variety of delivery channels and specialized subsidiaries in the areas of investment banking, life, non-life insurance, venture capital and asset management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Real estate economics</span> Application of economic techniques to real estate markets

Real estate economics is the application of economic techniques to real estate markets. It tries to describe, explain, and predict patterns of prices, supply, and demand. The closely related field of housing economics is narrower in scope, concentrating on residential real estate markets, while the research on real estate trends focuses on the business and structural changes affecting the industry. Both draw on partial equilibrium analysis, urban economics, spatial economics, basic and extensive research, surveys, and finance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second mortgage</span>

Second mortgages, commonly referred to as junior liens, are loans secured by a property in addition to the primary mortgage. Depending on the time at which the second mortgage is originated, the loan can be structured as either a standalone second mortgage or piggyback second mortgage. Whilst a standalone second mortgage is opened subsequent to the primary loan, those with a piggyback loan structure are originated simultaneously with the primary mortgage. With regard to the method in which funds are withdrawn, second mortgages can be arranged as home equity loans or home equity lines of credit. Home equity loans are granted for the full amount at the time of loan origination in contrast to home equity lines of credit which permit the homeowner access to a predetermined amount which is repaid during the repayment period.

A housing bubble is one of several types of asset price bubbles which periodically occur in the market. The basic concept of a housing bubble is the same as for other asset bubbles, consisting of two main phases. First there is a period where house prices increase dramatically, driven more and more by speculation. In the second phase, house prices fall dramatically. Housing bubbles tend to be among the asset bubbles with the largest effect on the real economy, because they are credit-fueled, because a large number of households participate and not just investors, and because the wealth effect from housing tends to be larger than for other types of financial assets.

A real-estate bubble or property bubble is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real-estate markets, and it typically follows a land boom. A land boom is the rapid increase in the market price of real property such as housing until they reach unsustainable levels and then decline. This period, during the run up to the crash, is also known as froth. The questions of whether real estate bubbles can be identified and prevented, and whether they have broader macroeconomic significance, are answered differently by schools of economic thought, as detailed below.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish property bubble</span> Irish mid 2000s asset price bubble

The Irish property bubble was the speculative excess element of a long-term price increase of real estate in the Republic of Ireland from the early 2000s to 2007, a period known as the later part of the Celtic Tiger. In 2006, the prices peaked at the top of the bubble, with a combination of increased speculative construction and rapidly rising prices; in 2007 the prices first stabilised and then started to fall until 2010 following the shock effect of the Great Recession. By the second quarter of 2010, house prices in Ireland had fallen by 35% compared with the second quarter of 2007, and the number of housing loans approved fell by 73%.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish property bubble</span>

The Spanish property bubble is the collapsed overshooting part of a long-term price increase of Spanish real estate prices. This long-term price increase has happened in various stages from 1985 up to 2008. The housing bubble can be clearly divided in three periods: 1985–1991, in which the price nearly tripled; 1992–1996, in which the price remained somewhat stable; and 1996–2008, in which prices grew astonishingly again. Coinciding with the financial crisis of 2007–08, prices began to fall. In 2013, Raj Badiani, an economist at IHS Global Insight in London, estimated that the value of residential real estate has dropped more than 30 percent since 2007 and that house prices would fall at least 50 percent from the peak by 2015. Alcidi and Gros note; “If construction were to continue at the still relatively high rate of today, the process of absorption of the bubble would take more than 30 years”.

The United States subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. It was triggered by a large decline in US home prices after the collapse of a housing bubble, leading to mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures, and the devaluation of housing-related securities. Declines in residential investment preceded the Great Recession and were followed by reductions in household spending and then business investment. Spending reductions were more significant in areas with a combination of high household debt and larger housing price declines.

United States housing prices experienced a major market correction after the housing bubble that peaked in early 2006. Prices of real estate then adjusted downwards in late 2006, causing a loss of market liquidity and subprime defaults.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Causes of the 2000s United States housing bubble</span>

Observers and analysts have attributed the reasons for the 2001–2006 housing bubble and its 2007–10 collapse in the United States to "everyone from home buyers to Wall Street, mortgage brokers to Alan Greenspan". Other factors that are named include "Mortgage underwriters, investment banks, rating agencies, and investors", "low mortgage interest rates, low short-term interest rates, relaxed standards for mortgage loans, and irrational exuberance" Politicians in both the Democratic and Republican political parties have been cited for "pushing to keep derivatives unregulated" and "with rare exceptions" giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "unwavering support".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South East Asian and Hong Kong property markets</span>

Ever since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, property markets have greatly developed through the years. Asian governments have improved the financial stance associated with the structure of housing finance, allowing more access to a diverse range of mortgages products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian property bubble</span>

The Australian property bubble is the economic theory that the Australian property market has become or is becoming significantly overpriced and due for a significant downturn. Since the early 2010s, various commentators, including one Treasury official, have claimed the Australian property market is in a significant bubble.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chinese property bubble (2005–2011)</span>

The 2005 Chinese property bubble was a real estate bubble in residential and commercial real estate in China. The New York Times reported that the bubble started to deflate in 2011, while observing increased complaints that members of the middle-class were unable to afford homes in large cities. The deflation of the property bubble is seen as one of the primary causes for China's declining economic growth in 2013.

The 2010 fake housing loan in India was uncovered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in India. CBI arrested eight top-ranking officials of public sector banks and financial institutions, including the LIC Housing Finance CEO Ramchandran Nair, in connection with the scam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2007–2008 financial crisis</span> Worldwide economic crisis

The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or Global Financial Crisis (GFC), was a severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm." Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to American real estate, as well as a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. Financial institutions worldwide suffered severe damage, reaching a climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and a subsequent international banking crisis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baltic states housing bubble</span>

The Baltic states' housing bubble was an economic bubble involving major cities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The three Baltic countries had enjoyed a relatively strong economic growth between 2000 and 2006, and the real estate sectors had performed well since 2000. In fact, in between 2005Q1 and 2007Q1, the official house price index for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania recorded a sharp jump of 104.6%, 134.3% and 106.7%. By comparison, the official house price index for Euro Area increased by 11.8% for a similar time period.

Real estate in Panama is about how the Republic of Panama's real estate industry has grown since 2006, as foreign investments helped to fuel Panama's economy and housing market.

The Real Estate Act, 2016 is an Act of the Parliament of India which seeks to protect home-buyers as well as help boost investments in the real estate industry. The Act establishes a Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) in each state for regulation of the real estate sector and also acts as an adjudicating body for speedy dispute resolution. The bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 10 March 2016 and by the Lok Sabha on 15 March 2016. The Act came into force on 1 May 2016 with 61 of 92 sections notified. The remaining provisions came into force on 1 May 2017. The Central and state governments are liable to notify the Rules under the Act within a statutory period of six months.

The 2022 Canadian property crash refers to a significant rise in Canadian real estate prices from 2002 to present which some observers have called a real estate bubble. From 2003 to 2018, Canada saw an increase in home and property prices of up to 337% in some cities. By 2018, home-owning costs were above 1990 levels when Canada saw its last housing bubble burst. Bloomberg Economics ranks Canada as the second largest housing bubble across the OECD in 2019 and 2021. Starting in February 2022, prices started to decline rapidly as the Bank of Canada hiked interest rates culminating in detached prices to decline by $400,000 in the Greater Toronto Area by September of 2022.

References

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