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MUMBAI - After a two-year surge, home prices in India have dropped as much as 20 per cent because even the most upwardly mobile tech graduates can no longer afford to buy, forcing developers to consider building for the poorer masses.
"We're at a point where growth in salaries has not kept pace with property price increases," said Hari Krishna, of Kotak Realty Funds, a unit of Kotak Mahindra Bank that has been raising US$350 million ($505 million) for property joint ventures in India.
"Many developers are rationalising prices across the country and certain sets of people are saying there's a need to focus more on either the luxury or the mass market."
Since India eased rules on inward property investment in early 2005, the country has swept into a dusty frenzy of construction, doubling land prices in major cities.
Drawn by a thriving, 1.1 billion-person economy, where a new batch of graduates swarm out of technology parks eager to shop and go home to modern apartments, global property investors such as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have rushed in.
A raft of developers such as DLF and Parsvnath Developers have listed on the Mumbai stock market to raise funds for expansion drives. Yearly property investment is projected to double to US$90 billion by 2010.
But a drop of 20 per cent in residential transactions since January - as rising interest rates and soaring prices put India's new rich off buying - has persuaded many developers to take a second look at their business models.
Prices have fallen 15 to 20 per cent in the New Delhi area and Punjab state, and have paused in Mumbai after sharp rises.
Most developers have been targeting the one million families bringing in US$25,000 to US$50,000 a year - for example, accountants and software programmers.
Another million families are expected to join their ranks over the next three years and the number of "super-rich" families with an annual income of more than US$250,000 is set to nearly triple to 141,000.
But with fierce competition to build high-margin apartments for the rich, some investors are starting to target the 53 million families earning US$2500 to US$5000 a year - where the much-vaunted figure of a 20 million home shortfall originates.
An estimated 22 million families should be lifted out of poverty and into this segment of society by 2010.
Gross margins for the mass market are 20 per cent, rather than the 30 per cent for high-end housing. But developers can forge healthy businesses by building huge townships on non-prime land that is more easily acquired.
"Our view is that building residential units for the lower middle class in that part of the world is pretty recession-proof," said Alastair King, chief executive of Eredene Capital, which is listed on London's Alternative Investment Market.
"These are people taking out mortgages for the first time," he said, citing bank clerks, junior civil servants and hotel chambermaids as examples.
Bank exposure to housing loans tripled in three years to about US$60 billion in 2006, but that was only about 6 per cent of gross domestic product - so industry players are unconcerned about any US-style mortgage default crisis. King said blocks might be sold to Indian developers working on slum redevelopment projects in central Mumbai - they are obliged to find homes for people they evict.
Some investors are steering clear of residential homes altogether.
"The residential market has taken a bit of a beating, but commercial prices are super buoyant and will continue to rise," said Vikram Mehta, a director at Coldwell Banker, a unit of US real estate brokerage Realogy Corp. "Multinationals and Indian companies - everybody wants to expand."
Worries about the housing market and recent stock market turmoil have depressed property stocks.
Earlier this week, the latest developer to list, Puravankara Projects, was trading nearly 6 per cent below its issue price after making its market debut last week.
The country's biggest listed developer, DLF, has seen its stock fall 12 per cent since its July market debut. But analysts say the firm, which raised US$2.25 billion in its IPO, is undervalued and a move into mass housing should be positive.
"DLF is going into mass housing two years down the line, and that's a good thing," said JPMorgan analyst Gunjan Prithyan. "Like Chinese companies, it's a volume game rather than a margin game, but it has huge potential."
DECLINE AND FALL
* India's residential property market has boomed since inward investment rules were relaxed.
* Many developers have listed on the Mumbai exchange to raise funds.
* House prices are falling because incomes have failed to keep up with surging prices.
- Reuters
