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Where the Indian real estate market is concerned, Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and People of Indian Origin (PIO) have never had it so good.
Thanks to the rupee depreciation and discounts being offered by builders to clear the inventory, online real estate aggregators say about 25-30 per cent of enquiries and transactions are coming from overseas Indians.
Ashwinder Raj Singh, CEO - Residential Services, JLL India, observed: “Generally, the NRI community prefers to invest in their states of origin — primarily Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Delhi-NCR.
“However, since residential inventory has piled up in the two major cities of Delhi and Mumbai, investors are currently very well placed to find good bargains in these markets, as most developers there are offering discounts and attractive financial schemes.”
Besides home-grown platforms like Commonfloor and Rupert Murdoch-backed PropTiger, international names like Waughglobal and Squareyard are also tapping into the booming NRI property demand.
Rise in enquiries Said Vikash Malpani, co-founder and Head, Common Floor Groups: “NRI enquiries have risen from 18 per cent to over 35 per cent in last couple of months, with a large number of NRIs opting for property as a safe investment bet.”
Most online real estate platform operators BusinessLine spoke to indicated that NRIs prefer the online mode — not only do they get a 3D view of the properties, but the property portals offer plenty of hand-holding as well.
Said Vivek Agarwal, Principal Partner, Squareyards.com: “The primary real estate in India is actually being sold to NRIs as the domestic market is still turbulent. We do about 300 transactions a month and about 30 per cent comes from NRIs.” “We do a complete end-to-end transaction by hand-holding our NRI clientele,” he added. “We facilitate things like PAN card generation, repatriation issues and also PIO cards — some of which are mandatory while making an investment in India.”
Recently, Australian cricket legend Steve Waugh launched online real estate property platform Waughglobal.com in India. Apart from servicing the Indian Diaspora’s real estate needs, Waughglobal is also looking to offer online courses for brokers.
“There is traction in the online space with companies focusing on customers with listings. We introduced this portal as the number of Indian Diaspora across the globe is on the rise,” Waugh, who serves Waughglobal as Chairman, told BusinessLine .
The company said it is also looking to provide high networth individuals (HNIs) with ancillary services such as bank finance and property management.
NRI interest is highest in pockets such as Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The price band typically runs from ₹30 lakh to ₹3 crore.
Parallel listing PropTiger.com makes the high-end luxury homes in India listed on its portal also available on MansionGlobal.com, a standalone, global luxury real estate.
MansionGlobal.com was launched by Dow Jones & Co, a unit of News Corp, in May 2015.
Said Dhruv Agarwala, CEO of PropTiger.com and Makaan.com: “Luxury homes across India have witnessed an appreciation in prices over the last few quarters, despite the overall residential market remaining very soft. By listing our high-end properties on Mansion Global, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com are now targeting a wider audience of potential NRI buyers.”
iProperty.com India, which is largely focused on NRI customer, has arranged tie-ups with leading financial institutions and nationalised banks to offer favourable home loans to NRIs.
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