Real estate

Residential demand in the large cities is still mostly end-user demand and domestic investment. Rental demand follows the same payrolls: financial and headquarters staff in Mumbai, technology and global-capability campuses in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, a mix of government, professional services and technology across Delhi NCR, autos and electronics around Chennai and Pune. A household that buys for its own use and a buyer underwriting a stranger’s rent are running different sums. This page leaves both sums without a printed yield.

Offices are the property face of the services export economy. The stock that global tenants actually occupy sits in named corridors: Bandra-Kurla and Lower Parel, the Outer Ring Road and Whitefield, Gurugram and Noida, HITEC City, the OMR, Hinjawadi and Kharadi. Most of the NCR’s newer offices were built in Gurugram and Noida, outside Delhi proper. A campus lease and a tower split among many small occupiers trade as different assets.

Retail property follows organised retail, and organised retail is further along in some cities than in others. Warehouses and logistics parks follow the same consumption, plus manufacturing corridors and the ports. Data centres follow power, fibre and cable landing, which concentrates enquiry in a handful of metros. A megawatt announced at a groundbreaking remains a proposal until the hall is operating. Hotels in the business cities follow weekday travel. Leisure coasts and heritage circuits are a different trade, and they sit outside the metro pages on this hub.

The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 requires promoters and agents to register with the state authority, above the thresholds in the Act and the state rules. Registration, a completion date on the portal, and a finished building with an occupation certificate are three stages. The inventory of projects lives on the state regulator’s site. GRIP does not copy it.

For a buyer who lives abroad, the foreign-exchange rule is FEMA 21(R) of 26 March 2018. An NRI, defined as a citizen of India resident outside India, or an OCI cardholder resident outside India, may acquire immovable property other than agricultural land, a farmhouse or plantation property. The consideration has to come through banking channels the regulation permits, not through currency notes. Other non-residents are on a different clause of the same instrument. Agricultural land stays outside a residential purchase even for an NRI. Inheritance is its own route. The regulation should be read in its current consolidated form before a transfer.

Stamp duty and registration are state subjects. Circle rates are local. A title in Gurugram, a title in Noida and a title in Delhi are three separate records inside one labour market. Foreign ownership of a company that then holds land is a different structure from a personal purchase, and it picks up company law, tax and, where it applies, the foreign-investment policy. That structure is counsel’s work, and it still has to respect the bar on agricultural land.

The ordinary home loan is a rupee loan from an Indian bank or housing-finance company, priced off domestic funding and regulated as such. The rate moves. A foreign-currency mortgage against an Indian flat is uncommon. A buyer resident abroad still has to satisfy the lender’s rules on income, and the FEMA rule on how the purchase is paid. Pre-sales fund a large share of new residential construction. That funding becomes a delivery risk when sales slow, which is why the RERA account rules exist.

SEBI’s Real Estate Investment Trust regulations, first issued in 2014 and amended since, allow a listed vehicle to hold completed, rent-earning property. Office and retail trusts have listed. A REIT is a claim on rent and on the manager’s balance sheet, rather than on a city’s house prices. Leverage, the asset list, related-party rules and the distribution policy are in the offer document. No distribution yield is printed here.

Delivery, title and the gap between a soft launch and an occupation certificate are the standing residential risks. In redevelopment markets, especially Mumbai, the risk also includes the society, the development-control rules and the time a tenant or member spends off the site. In the NCR the risk includes which state’s authority actually holds the record. Water, access roads and power for a peripheral township are operating questions, whatever a brochure lists among the amenities.

Office risk is tenant concentration and the renewal cycle of global capability centres, plus the local commute that decides whether a campus stays full. Retail risk is the split between a mall, a high street and an app that still needs a dark store. Logistics risk is land aggregation, and the gap between a road that was announced and the road trucks already use. Currency risk belongs to a foreign holder of rupee rent. A national growth print leaves all of these in place.