High Net Investors become High Loss Investors

Newspapers and moronic channels like CNBC TV18 have always led the common people to believe that High Net Investors (HNI) know what they are doing since they have access to the best and the brightest financial advisors. The more apt term for these HNI folks should be speculators and short term traders who run in the direction where the wind is blowing. With one rash decision after these others, these folks are losing their shirts in every investment they make. First they crashed with the stock market, their property investments are going bust and now their supposed safe investments in Gilts are losing sheen as well. Soon these folks will join the ranks of the middle class, a casualty of the following the pied pipers of Dalal Street.

Economic times reports

HNIs stuck with gilt funds as yields rise
MUMBAI: 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire' — that best describes the plight of high net worth investors (HNIs), who shifted their investments
from shares to gilt schemes at the start of 2009. Yields on government bonds have risen sharply in the past couple of months and are expected to stay that way for some time. Consequently, investors in these schemes are staring at sizeable losses, should they decide to redeem their investments anytime soon. Yields and bond prices move in opposite direction. So higher bond yields means lower bond prices, and vice-versa. As yields rise and prices fall, the value of government securities declines. As gilt schemes trade in government bonds to benefit from the price appreciation, a decline in bond prices impacts their performance. Gilt schemes of domestic mutual funds attracted money worth Rs 39,000 crore and Rs 20,000 crore in January and February, respectively. From roughly 9.55% in July last year, the yield on government bonds fell to around 5.5% in December, and slipped further to a historic low of 4.86% early January. Many HNIs flocked to gilt schemes, expecting that interest rates would fall further and settle between 4% and 4.5%, thanks to the downward bias in inflation and policy rates. But that assumption turned out to be a costly mistake. Contrary to expectations, 10-year bond yields have risen sharply to over 7% last week from lows in January, partly triggered by news of the government's huge borrowing programme. Fund managers and money market participants do not see the yields falling soon, as higher government borrowing increases the supply of bonds, which negatively impacts prices and pushes up yields. Even though RBI has consistently maintained its stance to reduce policy rates, some of its responses in the bond buybacks have left market participants confused. It announced that it would buy back bonds from traders to pump in liquidity into the system. But market participants feel that the move has been largely half hearted, with the central bank only buying back illiquid papers. This affected its "signalling" ability, they suggested. Now with RBI once again announcing details of its borrowing and buyback plan for the next fiscal, opinion is split on whether it will succeed in reigning in yields. Ritesh Jain, head of fixed income at Canara Robeco AMC, said bonds could do well in the next two quarters. "But the real skill would be to exit when the situation changes again towards worse. With government pumping in money the way it is, inflationary pressures are sure to resurface by the end of the year," he added.

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DLF customers gang up, pressurise developer to commit refund

Latest developments in the DLF's chennai project from ET.

DLF customers gang up, pressurise developer to commit refund
29 Mar 2009, 0633 hrs IST, ET Bureau

CHENNAI: Customer pressure seemed to have got the better of India’s realty giant DLF. Nearly 300 such buyers, who have backed out of the company’s prestigious ‘Garden City’ project in Chennai, refused to leave its premises till they got a written assurance that their money would be paid back in full.
Consequently, DLF has assured them that the formal refund letter addressed individually to the exiters would be given by April first. In its communication dated March 28, 2009, DLF Southern Homes, the special purpose vehicle executing the project on Old Mahabalipuram Road, said "the process of full refund will commence from 1st April, 2009, and will be completed before 30 September, 2009. The priority of disbursement shall be based on the order of first exit letters received and will be intimated by 10th April 2009."
For over a year and more, problems for the country’s largest listed developer have only been mounting. It has been facing the ire of customers, who made bookings in the 3,493 apartment Garden City project on 53 acres, which marked the Gurgaon-based realty biggie’s maiden entry in the city.
Apparently, the total number of exiters from the project was pegged at 580 out of its existing base of 1,800 customers. DLF Southern Homes was to have given a letter outlining the timeline of refund for all the exiters. But that did not happen, provoking angry reactions from the exiters, who refused to leave DLF premises until they got one.
The buyers, who advanced payments, have organised themselves into a Google Group, constantly monitoring the builder’s progress. Last month, as part of the attempts to appease its customers, wanting to exit from the project, DLF had brought down the prices from Rs 2500 to Rs 2600 per sq ft against Rs 2800 to Rs 3200 per sq ft for its existing customers. For new customers, the basic price was fixed at Rs 2750 per sq ft.
But this too seems to have not made any headway. For, on Saturday evening, nearly 300 buyers converged at the DLF office, seeking a written assurance from the developer to refund their money paid as advance for the project.
Earlier this month, the realty major had expressed its commitment to complete the project on schedule. This was in the wake of reports about consumers shooting exit letters.
If delayed approvals triggered anxiety and panic among existing customers, DLF Southern Homes MD K K Raman allayed the fears stating that "the construction activity is in full swing and we are well on schedule. We are committed to hand over the homes by April to June 2011, as originally committed."
"We do not foresee any problem in adhering to the timelines as we are adequately capitalised," DLF ED J Subrahmanian further said.

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RIP, MBA

Another bubble pops. CNBC, of all the channels is running this story. Its hard to imagine that someone would slander the MBA degree to such an extent. time for a new phrase. Wonder when we see these articles about Indian MBA schools like IIM's and ISB. All Economic times does is to print articles about their average salaries in rupees, skewed every time due to dollar salaries earned by some folks who got placed in the US/UK. Morons don't understand the meaning of medians and standard deviations.

Those who can, do it,
Those who cannot, teach,
and those who cannot teach, do an MBA.

however I would not say that the MBA is useless. It has its value but a 1 year program post graduation program is better then two. Again the 100k loans for US MBA's are bad financial decisions, specially when high paying jobs are scarce. If you would know a thing about finance, this could be something to consider

Put your ear to the ground near any business school campus, and you will hear the sound of another bubble about to pop. The MBA will soon be joining equities and house titles in the museum of formerly overvalued pieces of paper.

The problem in the short term begins, like so many other fine things these days, in the financial sector. Over the past two decades, about one-third of graduates from top business schools took jobs in finance. But banking will never be what it once was (we can only hope), and consulting—the other major consumer of MBAs—is reeling, too. Couple declining demand with the fact that at the onset of a recession, the supply of students actually rises as the prospectively unemployed look for ways to fill in gaps in their CVs, and "shorting" the MBA looks like a compelling near-term trading strategy.

The really grim news for the MBA, however, is about more than short-term trends. Isn't it just a little suspicious, after all, that the sector that showed the greatest appetite for MBAs was the most grotesquely mismanaged? In fact, the economic crisis has exposed long-standing flaws not just in the modern approach to business education but in the very idea of business education.

The truth is that the relevance of the technical training allegedly offered by the MBA was always overblown. The idea that there is some body of knowledge pertaining to business management that can be packaged up and distributed to the business universe in two-year course-lets—well, it sounded good about a century ago, when it was first conceived. Maybe it still had merit when the schools were turning out only a few thousand graduates per year. But it certainly stopped making sense well before the schools achieved their current level of production of a whopping 140,000 or so graduates per year. The empirical evidence on the contribution of the MBA to individual career performance seems to bear this out—mainly because it doesn't exist. In fact, if the relevance of an M.D. to the performance of doctors were even half as unsubstantiated, we'd probably be fantasizing about tossing a few physicians in jail, too.

The other truth helpfully revealed in the throes of the crisis is that ethics and integrity and social responsibility aren't just optional extras for good business management—unless by "management," you mean "looting." Managers don't need to be trained; they need to be educated—in the sense of "civilized." Unfortunately, a business degree isn't just irrelevant to that purpose; it's positively detrimental.

Now, to be fair, people don't behave like jerks just because they spend two years in business school. After all, as many of my business school friends have pointed out, most of the first year goes into heavy partying, and the second year is really a marathon job fair. No, for the most part, people behave like jerks because nobody stops them from doing so. The charmers at AIG walked away with multimillion-dollar second homes as a reward for exposing their institution and the entire financial system to outrageous risks because it was (so far as we know) a perfectly legal way to make money. The whizzes at Goldman Sachs hedged their supersize profits with underpriced, implicitly publicly backed insurance from AIG for the same reason.

If we ask why no one stopped these people, however, we come right back to business school. It was the market fundamentalism that dominates business school thinking that assured us that markets are self-regulating. It was the management myth—the idea that there is some specialized, teachable body of expertise that constitutes management—that confirmed the strange notion that these people were capable of regulating themselves. And it was the shareholder-value model from Business 101 that said all you need to do is load up managers with tons of stock options and they'll be sure to do the right thing. These aren't just ideas that happen to be taught at business school; these are the ideas that provide the rationale for the existence of the schools. The only semblance of a theory behind modern business education is that it purportedly produces "experts" in shareholder-value maximization who are capable of forming an ideal, self-regulating market.

It's a neat theory, of course, and pretty radical, too. But not since the fall of the Soviet Union has a system of belief woken up with so many parking tickets on its windshield.

The reality is that business school is now chiefly a community of intention. It brings together people who share certain career aspirations—for the most part, to make big bucks—and occupies their time teaching them a few technical things that they don't need to know, along with a code of conduct that says, in essence, whatever is legal is ethical; and if it makes money, it's a positive duty. It's now clear that we would have all been much better off if, instead of cloistering these people on fancy campuses with world-class golf courses, we'd have sent them off to do two years of national service.

For the benefit of beleaguered business school academics, it's worth pointing out that a world with fewer MBAs is not necessarily a world without business studies. On the contrary, once researchers dispense with the idea that they have to package their material for the purported benefit of junior managers everywhere, they could actually study business. Maybe they could even learn to criticize it. Maybe they and their students could even learn to report on it, the way that journalists used to do.


In the meantime, since the national-service idea probably isn't going to gain much traction, I suggest that it's time to go long on the humanities. Now that we've tried business with savages, perhaps it's time to give the educated a shot.

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35% - 50% drop - The new normal

So It looks like Mumbai is no different then the rest of the country. All the arguments of island city, no area to develop , constant demand, no supply, blah, blah seem to have failed. Credit and affordability drives markets. For too long we have been subjected to the builder and realtor rhetoric and many have been suckered into buying properties at outrageous prices.

From what I see 3000 per sq/ft seems to be the floor for housing in suburbs. Now depending on the builder you can get suckered into the super-built up area and end up paying 40% more but atleast
the base price is down.

Source : CNBC-TV18

Home buyers should gear up for good news. Home sale volumes seem to be bouncing back but at steep discounts. Mumbai developers have started bringing down prices, and in some cases the dip is as high as 50%.

CNBC-TV18’s Priyanka Ghosh reports.

For those who are waiting to buy a house, this could be a good time. New project launches in the market is witnessing a steep correction, with apartment prices in suburban Mumbai recording a dip by a whopping 50% in some cases, a clear indication of how hard pressed developers are for sale. Not surprising, as many of them have had single digit transactions last quarter.

Sandeep Runwal, Managing Director of the Runwal Group said, “In Thane, if you were selling at Rs 5,000 per sq ft (earlier), prices are down to Rs 3,100 and 3,300 per sq ft (now). So, you have seen a realistic correction of 45-50%... but it has brought the consumers back into the market.”

Sanjay Dutt, Managing Director of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj added, “I am talking about developers like Akruti, Lodha and Rustamjee, who have launched projects in the region of Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 a sq ft and from whatever I have learnt, they are selling.”

The Runwal Group sold 600-700 apartments in the past three months at a discount of 40-45%. Whereas, HDIL sold 70% of its Kurla project in five days, in March 2009 after launching it at a 35% discount.

CNBC-TV18 learns that Thane alone had 6,000 transactions in the past three months. Companies like Orbit Corporation and Nirmal Lifestyle too have revised pricing to the tune of about 35%.

That, according to experts, is in tandem with the average price correction Mumbai has seen this quarter.

But there is another rationale to this rampant price reduction. We understand that developers have come under tremendous pressure from both banks and private equity players to sell and churn inventories if they want funding and disbursal of loans. And, of course, in a cash strapped environment, developers have little choice to accept these terms and bring down prices to sell.

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Mumbai project prices

I'm trying to consolidate some of the information posted in the comemnts. Lets keep updating this list.

Chembur

Everything was 7.5k and above. Now uniform 7000 (except Diamond Garden - about 10k)

Raheja Acropolis - Aphrodite building - Two months ago - 8600. Now 7200.

Remaining buildings in Deonar - havent checked, but have to trade down compared to Raheja.

came across this fantastic construction in Deonar, problem was all apts were 2200 sq. ft. Normal times, would have been a 9-10k building, was quoting 7.5-8.5. Not much available though, apparently.

Central Mumbai

Have only started research here.

Ashoka tower, Parel - Peninsula Project, Quoting 20k, Investor at 18k

Ashoka Garden, parel - Another Peninsula Project - Was 14000, now magicbricks has a seller at 11500.

Dosti Flamingoes - 10k, down from 12-14.

6:56 AM
Anonymous Cool Head said...

Common Man,
Here's to add to your database. A colleague was shown a new complex coming up at Thakur Village Kandivli, in the "luxurious" category. Builder says 5999 discounted from 7500 a few months ago. Broker signalled that if serious can be had for even 5500, my colleague is angling for about 4000.

7:02 AM

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Tarot card readers and Fortune tellers make hay

It is boom time for clarivoyants as Indian's turn to fortune tellers to know their future.

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Phenomenal fall in real estate prices

From here

Real estate market in India is trapped in a vicious cycle of plunging prices. With the bottom nowhere in sight, potential buyers do not want to try and catch a falling knife, says Pranay Vakil, chairman, Knight Frank India, a property consultancy firm. "They are expecting a further cut in prices, while developers themselves have been dropping prices, anticipating an increase in sales volumes." Rajneesh Chhabra, a property broker based in south Delhi, says asking rates are down 30% from their peak, but it's still almost impossible to find a buyer. "Financiers have disappeared from the market and those dependent on bank loans do not buy property in south Delhi," he says, adding that deal volumes have shrunk by more than 95% from their peaks about a year ago.

With the financial year drawing to a close this month, cash-strapped real estate developers have already cut prices by an average 40% in all their upcoming projects. "I expect prices will soon come back to the 2003-04 levels, when rates were hovering between Rs 12,000 and Rs 17,000 in upmarket areas like Malabar Hill," says Mumbai Estate Agents Association president Yashwant Dalal. In Malabar Hill, the most expensive home address in India, prices have fallen by a fourth to Rs 25,000-45,000 per sq ft, depending on the age of the building and amenities. Ten months ago, actor Vinod Khanna offered to pay Rs 1.25 lakh per sq ft for a 2,500 sq ft apartment in the ultra-luxury El Plazo housing society in the Hanging Gardens area of Malabar Hill. "Now the rates are in that area (Hanging Gardens) are around Rs 70,000 to Rs 75,000 per sq ft. Similarly, in Pedder Road, rates are around Rs 45,000 per sq ft," Mr Dalal says.

A London-based Indian national acquired a 3,475 sq ft property at NCPA Apartments in the Nariman Point area at Rs 97,842 per sq ft nearly six months ago, but rates there are almost half that now, says a south Mumbai property dealer. In central Mumbai's Worli and Lower Parel areas, rates are down to Rs 12,000-18,000 per sq ft, while in Bandra they have fallen by more than a fifth to Rs 15,000-25,000. Where price drops have been of the order of 50%, buyers appear to be showing interest. "We are quoting Rs 16,000 per sq ft for our new project in Lower Parel and the initial response has been positive," says Orbit Corporation finance director Ram Yadav. A year ago, property prices in this area were over Rs 35,000 per sq ft.

Properties in the heart of the national capital on Prithviraj Road, Aurangzeb Road, Amrita Shergill Marg, Jor Bagh and Golf Links, which have seen deals involving industrialists such as LN Mittal, Naveen Jindal and GM Rao as well as film star Shah Rukh Khan, are now struggling to find buyers. A 11,250 sq ft home in Golf Links, which was purchased for Rs 70 crore, is now available for Rs 50 crore, but there are few takers. "Earlier, financiers used to buy homes. Now, they neither have money nor the hope that they will be able to sell it at a higher rate and so have just withdrawn from the market. End-users are rare and they only negotiate, but don't buy in the expectation that prices will fall further," says Neeraj Chopra, a Dwarka-based property broker.

In India's technology capital Bangalore, prices have fallen by up to 25% in some areas, a recent Morgan Stanley report says. DLF, India's biggest real estate company, cut rates by about 30% at its upcoming project and the company sees prices falling further. Irshad Ahmed, president of Irshads Property Matters, says that in suburbs such as Whitefield, Outer Ring Road and Sarjapur Road hard bargaining can result in final prices, which are 30% lower than card rates. Property dealers and builders are also lining up an array of discounts and freebies to try and clinch deals. The Gateway project by developer Brigade in Malleshwaram, one of the oldest localities in town, is quoting at Rs 5,090 per sq ft against Rs 5,790 per sq ft last year.

But there is scope for negotiations, depending on which flat is chosen and the mode of payment, says an official of the marketing team. Second-sale rates at Gateway are Rs 4,700-4,800 per sq ft, according to a property dealer.

In Bangalore's downtown area, the Mantri group's upmarket Altius complex, which has only one apartment to a floor with a current market price of around Rs 14 crore, there aren't many units available for a second sale. A city broker says that since there are no other projects that open up to views of the city's lung space, Cubbon Park, the price will hold. But the number of people showing interest in buying has dropped, he adds. However, in the upmarket areas of Chennai there have been no considerable price drops. In Chennai's Arcot Road, Purasawakkam, Thiruvanmiyur and Valasaravakkam areas, rates still hover between Rs 4,700 and Rs 6,600, about the same a year ago, a dealer says, but prices have fallen by 20-30% in the suburbs.

In Kolkata, prices have fallen from their peaks touched in mid-2008 and hover around levels seen at the beginning of the year. In areas such as Ballygunge Circular Road, Sunny Park and Queens Park rates, which were Rs 8,500-10,000 per sq ft in January 2008 jumped to Rs 13,000-14,000 in June-July before dropping to Rs 9,000-11,000.

"Prices in the city's posh areas, including Ballygunge Circular Road and Queens Park, had surged because of limited supply, but they have been hit now. Areas like Prince Anwar Shah Road, Behala and Lake Town remain unaffected, as real estate prices in these areas never reached unrealistic levels," says Jitendra Khaitan, CEO of real estate consultancy Pioneer Property Management. Sumit Dabriwala, managing director of property developer Hiland Group, says high-end residential properties, which were being sold at Rs 12,000-15,000 per sq ft last year, are averaging Rs 9,000-10,000 per sq ft now. "On an average, properties in upmarket areas have seen a 10-15 % price reduction in the premium category," he says. A few banks have cut home loan rates in recent weeks, sparking hope that sales will pick up in the quarter beginning April, rescuing the property market from its downward spiral. This could be a crucial period, as the impact of the ongoing financial crunch is expected to peak by then.

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