Sunday, February 25, 2007 

Is the Indian housing bubble a myth or a reality?

It would be easily the most scrutinized topic in any casual or serious discussion of recent times; the real estates are tooo hot in Chennai. The prices seem to have consistently risen over by 30% every year for the past three years. There seems to be a mad rush for apartments and individual properties in every damn place in the city, in fact the real estate prices have skyrocketed in any corner where there have been signs of economic activity.

There are innumerable theories floating around to explain the recent spike in prices

  • The builders are artificially constraining the supply of apartments and hiking prices till the prices spiral up to desirable levels.
  • There is too much NRI money, estimated to be around $15Bn, which has been infused into the system and that has lead to the speculation of the prices.
  • There is hot money chasing properties which would be sold out once there is a desirable appreciation.
  • The Morons in IT industry/new economy jobs have higher income levels and can’t stop the mad rush for home loans irrespective of interest rates.
  • There is a supply side shock and if we consider the demographics we need millions of homes and limited land supply.


Every reason seems to be possible, I thought, I'll give a shot at this. There is gonna be some finance in this post and non finance reader have to pardon me. I would try to explain the concepts in a common man's perspective. Here we go

I have collected the prevailing rental prices and the flat rates in the city and have summarized the same in the table below

The rent column specifies the Rent per Sq. ft and the Flat price gives an idea about the average price per Sq.ft demanded by the market in the existing scenario. The rent and land prices have been averaged out in each of the areas although there exists a undeniable parity in the prices within the area itself. On an average the consumer pays a monthly rent of around Rs 9000 for a 1 BHK flat (assumed to be 1000 Sq.ft) and has to pay about 40 Lacs if he was to own them.

Now, I would try to value the real estates considering them to be an investment option. Suppose I borrow some money from the bank and invest in real estates. I have to pay my EMI's (Equivated Monthly Installments) to the bank. I can always rent the flat to somebody and use the rent to pay a partial portion of my EMI.
Although the flat may cost around say Rs.10 lacs (I am just assuming at least in this example).The building would usually cost only Rs.2.50-Rs3.50 Lacs whereas the remaining (Rs.6.50 - Rs.7.50 Lacs) would be the land cost. Suppose that, you decide to sell the flat after 25 years, the flat/building per se has null value whereas the land has value. Now, we have two sources of income, one is the rent that we get every year and the other, land appreciation value.

Are you shouting tax benefits for the home loan you have availed?. I am coming there. Of course the Indian Government gives a capped tax exemption of 2.5 lacs (Principal (Max 1 Lacs) + Interest (Max 1.5 Lacs)).We could essentially avoid paying Rs.75000 in taxes for the income spent towards paying home loans.

The valuation summary has been presented below

You might have understood the first two columns, monthly rent (per Sq.ft) and yearly (per Sq.ft) rent which are quite straight forward.

Then what is this thing called PV of Rent. It is in the present value of the rent, which I would get from the asset in financial terms. It is essentially the current worth of the monthly rent which I would get every year. i.e getting Rs 60(current year)+Rs 60 (next year)+Rs 60(year after that) and Rs 60 in eternity which is worth Rs 895 now.

It is not worth Rs 1200 (Rs 60 *20 years) because the value of the money decreases due to inflation (rate at which my purchasing power decreases) and it has some adjustment for the risk in the asset (I am not going to confuse with risk adjusted expected returns so on and so forth) .Just get the concept that it is gettin an mothly rent of Rs 60 is worth only Rs 895 now.

It is assumed that the investor would expect at least a return of 10.5% (current floating home loan rates). The net rental present value is computed after considering a 3% annual maintenance expenditure of the annual rent .it is assumed that the annual rent would increase by about 4% year on year.

Suppose, we demolish the building, we may loose the rental income but there is always this value of the land that we can get. On an average the land price is at least 60% - 70% of the flat cost. So if we buy a flat for 10 Lacs, the land price is at least 7 Lacs, to be precise. If a Sq.ft cost about Rs 1000, a healthy proportion of about Rs 700/- can be easily apportioned towards the land price.The present value of the land essential captures this component of the price paid towards the flat price. The land price is assumed to be around 65% of the existing price while valuing the properties.

Now we need to compute the current worth of the tax benefits. We can avail a waiver of around Rs 2.50 lacs and save ourselves about Rs 75,000 every year. I have assumed the exemption amount to be around Rs 2.0 lacs (the interest component in the EMI is expected to decrease over the period) over the loan period.The current worth of the tax benefit is expected to be around 5.0 Lacs which translates to an average tax benefit of Rs 374/ Sq.ft (Rs 494 -1000 Sq.ft; Rs 353 -1400 Sq.ft; Rs 274 -1800 Sq.ft ).

The present value of the asset (6th column) is computed based on the expected future income (rent), land price and tax benefit.

The current price is based on the regressing the current market prices of rent and land prices. The equation turned out to be

Market Land Price/Sq.ft = -983.4 + 574.1 * Market Rent/Sq.ft
Current Asset Price = Market Land Price/Sq.ft * (1+Registration charges)

The government registration charges are usually about 10% of the Land price.

For all people who thought the Indian housing bubble is a reality we have to reconsider it, the calculations say that the asset prices are trading at a discount of about 10.8%.

There is more incentive for people to buy small homes which are in the suburbs where the assets are at a discount of about 25%.

If you were a frenzy fan of real estates and you wanted reasons to invest in the real estates, you can be sure that the real estates are not in a state of bubble. If you were skeptical of the valuations (Actually I was not convinced at that point) and need to cross check various scenarios,here we go.

we would try to take the worse case scenarios to the various variable that can signigicantly affect the valuations.

Upward bias on the Land Price

There could be a current upward bias in the land prices due to higher rentals which have been prevailing in system due to supply constraints of apartments. The other thing could be that the rentals could be on the higher side compared to the prevailing land prices. For instance, parts of velachery demands a rent of about Rs. 8/ Sq.ft, whereas land prices float around the Rs 2800 mark. We can test them right way

We can see that the current market price of the assets are at a premium of about 30%, if we consider that the land is worth only 30% of the current flat price, which is approximately the land price before three years. It seems to be fairly priced if the land is worth 50% of the current flat price.

The housing starts in sub urban areas, redevelopment in the existing areas and the SEZ (Special Economic Zones) can put the prices down as the demand would ease in the future. The demographics of India however suggest that the housing demand isn’t going to stop in the mid term. The demand rentals are expected to be in the upper spectrum as there is a constant movement of labor in the country towards zones of higher economic activity.

Concerns on Interest rate moving north

The next concern is about interest rates, the home loan rates have been increasing in the recent past and are slated to be high in the mid term (that is what the treasury yield curve seem to suggest).The table below kind of summarizes the premium or discount in the property if the interest rates increases or decreases.


The market prices seems to be fairly priced even if the homeloan rate rise to 14% levels.

Limited Tax benefits as the Property value increases

The next issue could be that a segment of people who buy the flat may not have the tax benefit and the tax benefit is capped to the people who buy properties of higher value.

The table below summarizes the premium or discount in the asset according to the property value purchased..


It is the same story, the asset prices are at a discount for all the classes of home buyers irrespective of the tax benefit

Conclusions

The real estate prices are fairly prices considering the current prices. However we can expect the real estates to rally deep north for the next two years. The prices would become expensive going forward. The premium which the buyers can pay depends on how fat their purses are.

It depends, as to what propostion of the disposable income one can spend towards real estates, However it also depends on how debt struck one wants to become !!!.

One more thing, the bottom of pyramid can never afford a real estates and would be the most affected by the recent spike in rents and land prices.
(PS: I started this excercise to prove that the real estates are in a dream bubble)

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Thursday, February 15, 2007 

The Other side of IT, Onsite & NRI's

There seems to be fuss around, as how the inflation (the rate at which my money loses value) has reached the 6.73% and even slated to kiss the unprecedented 7.0 % levels . The government has come up with knee jerk reactions like cutting down the fuel prices; it has taken steps to ban exports of wheat and milk powder, announced import duty cuts on cement, steel and edible oils. The happy news is that it would take time to show results and we can now live in an inflated environment.

The latest spike has occurred due to increased prices of manufactured products and primary articles like vegetables, eggs, meat and fish, oil seeds, condiments and spices.You know who this hurts the most ?

RBI recently increased the Cash Reserve Ratio CRR (the portion of total deposits in a bank that need to be deposited with the RBI) by 50 basis points to 6% in two stages. The first hike of 25 basis points will be effective from February 17 and the second from March 3 of the current year. The CRR increase will drain Rs 14,000 crore of liquidity from the banking system, on top of Rs 13,500 crore drained in the last week of December and the first week of January.

As the CRR is increased, the excess money would be drained out of the system; banks would have lower money to lend. This would essentially translate to lower credit growth and the consumer would not have excess money which would reduce the demand for goods and hence prevent the price from seeking north.

You might ask me as so what the point. The banks have had a credit growth of around 30 % over the past few years (Can you recollect so many tale calls pleading you to get credit cards and personal loans) and there is culprit in the form of real estate funding. Somebody needs to stop the real-estate from hopping up every another day.

Blame the IT & the new economy jobs, people have too much of money earned out of the dollar arbitrage and they are like irrationally bidding higher prices for the real estates. We can expect the FM to tinker the tax sops on the interest and principal now availed on home loans. No other prudent way to keep the prices down.

The salaries have compounded by 25% for the past three years and they are in reality unsustainable even in the mid term. All would vanish once the RBI decides to abstain itself from dirty float on the dollar rate. This is exactly what creates the supply side shock. People have too much money and they feel like buying too many things and that’s keeping the prices high (of course which company would not price the goods high if people are willing to pay any price just because they have too much money)

You might be wondering as to why I pulled the NRI's and the people who are retreating their hard earned money back to India. They are the people who are putting abundant money into the system. The RBI is unable to control the money supply as the money from NRI's are routed into the Indian system. Just compare this, a software engineer earns around $15,000 per in India gets to earn around $50,000 in the US. They are so kind enough to send the money back to our sweet homeland India. Now he is all eager to invest in Indian real estates. They can afford a flat for 50 lacs because they earns $50,000 and now how about the people who earn only $15,000.Infact the Per capital Income of an Indian is around $650.

The government needs to take some serious steps to lower the cap interest rate offered on NRI money. The RBI is like buying $2Bn every week just to keep the dollar hovering around 44 and keep exports attractive to rest of the world. This dirty game would end soon or latter, the market forces would eventually take guard. have seen what would happen if we try to control the exchange rates. The Central bank can certainly see the images of East Asian Crisis, the Russian imbroglio and the Tequila effect of South America looming over.

When the rupee is allowed to float, export would become expensive and margin would take a hit and think about the repercussions of this in the IT/KPO sector where the personal expenses currently contribute to around 45% of the total expenses.

Somebody needs to be rational else the electronic herd can take us for a ride!!! .There would be no hip, hop and hurray.All this happy feeling would vanish in a hurry

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Tuesday, February 13, 2007 

Thinking <-> Feeling about Love

Unconditional
Possessive
Strange
***

Begins with the senses
Gradually Embraces the Mind
Stays bouyant in the Heart
***

All is fair in Love & War
***

Joy <--<------>--> Pain
Hurts <----------> Forgives
You<------> I
Listens <--> Express
Feel
***

Its what Life is all about

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Friday, February 09, 2007 

I hate hypocrisy

I somehow did not want to write this post but Its itching me in my brain and I had to put it down somewhere.How does it feel when you know that somebody dramatises things and is taking unfair advantage of somebody.It is quite expected out of hyenas or wolves but not out of the lions.It's hard to digest that somebody wears a social goodie mask and wears an hyena's clad in personal life.

When we can influence somebody and we know that it could make all the difference to turn the tides towards them, the genuine would certainly abstain from it.There is this dark side of the masked one, the so called "goodies" somehow would substantiate the influence with an ulterior motive to influence them.Why would you make somebody vulnerable and be the vanguard as well.

I really appreciate the courage in the pack of hyneas to accept their inherent nature of deceit and I certainly admire them because they are what they are.I always confess this,its not the bad people that create all they problems in the society, they are there to do their part.It is the trans-qualified that disorient the equilibrium in the system.

I always wonder how they kind of mange to keep their conscience at bay.They need to be acting all the time.it is easy to be bad but it's very difficult to act like not one of those.

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Friday, February 02, 2007 

The Crush Factory

So when was your first crush on somebody? I must be getting you people back to those sweet teens when only a few glances from "that person", would invoke a butterfly which got to mellow in your heart. Gone are those days when I gottu to swim the "Crush Pond”. I had half mushies and tender masculine voices and would blush like a colgatEEEE when I get to be in the vicinity.

That’s a tough question indeed, as who my first crush was? I think it must be my seventh standard and I won't stop gazing at that girl. It was like nine pins, I fell into the "Crush pond", so often, with so many people. I was such a naughty guy that I would be "punished" (Don’t tell me its a punishment my dear teachers) to sit between girls in my higher secondary, no wonder it was a habit to me. I love examinations as I would have the greatest three hours, writing the examinations with senior and junior girls and in most cases I gottu sit with pretty girls ("at least in my eyes").I loved the annual examinations rather than the monthly test which were of shorter durations.

Age was no barrier to me, I can't tell you as to how I would concentrate in Physics just to get the attention of my Physics Mam, No wonder I have varied interest in most subjects. I love language classes, that was when I could have the chance to gaze at those Section "E & F" girls with sweet eyes and chinky looks. I can still remember that day; I would sit in that hot sun to look those cute faces in the bus stop when I was asked to take vanguard in our dad's business place during my school days.

When I asked this around in to my close chums, the experiences were even fascinating, Somebody had a crush on the nurse when he got out to see the world, some took advantage of his principal father to follow that girl in the school, some would borrow news papers so often with that neighbor to see that bubbly girl, somebody could remember that girl with the color purple dress and nothing more, some had the crush on that lovable aunty, some had crush on the receptionist, some had it on that cultural secretary, some had it on Shilpa Sheety , Some had it on their project manger, some had it on that girl who sit right nexts to him, some had it on his girl friend's best friend.

Ohhh My Godddd, So many people, so many experiences. Somebody even floated a theory that there is a higher probability to have a crush on a elder person when we are in teens. It’s an endless journey to fall into the crush pond.

How I loved those happy days buoyant in that "Crush Pond"

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