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Rupee collapse has some cheering
Jarnail Singh was thinking of buying a rental property in Vancouver to boost his family income.
That was until last week, when the Indian rupee hit an all time low as its fall since the first week of May continued. The rupee has lost more than 8 percent over the last seven weeks, after the US Fed indicated it may start scaling back its monetary stimulus programme later this year.
Notwithstanding the rupee trading near its life-time lows, the local currency is likely to stabilise around 57-58 level against the US dollar in the next one month, said experts this week.
For Singh this is a good time to buy a property in his homeland.
“One piece of property I was looking at is now about 20 per cent cheaper than it was in January,” said Singh, a Vancouver-area businessman.
Rupee depreciation may be bad news for the Indian economy, but not so for the non-resident Indians (NRIs) scouting for property back home, reported several Indian media this week. Cashing in on the opportunity to buy residential units cheaper by up to 20%, NRIs are queueing up big time, DNA India reported.
“The enquiries from NRIs for buying property in India have risen by at least 15-20% following the rupee depreciation. The enquiries may go up further once it touches the 60 mark,” Harinder Singh, managing director, Realistic Realtors, said. Eager to hardsell the Indian real estate story, Harinder Singh said "it is the most advisable time for NRIs to invest in India".
The number of calls from NRIs have gone up to 800 per month from 200 earlier at Investors Clinic, a real estate portal, as the property prices for them has come down by 20-25%, according to Nishant Singhal, Director – Strategy & Alliances, Investors Clinic.
Even before the rupee depreciation had begun, the NRI community had begun stepping up their enquiries in anticipation, according to analysts.
Another real estate portal Commonfloor.com is seeing 1 million visits every month, which is double of what it used to get few months ago.
Sumit Jain, CEO, Commonfloor.com, said the NRI traffic was coming primarily from North America and Australia. And the demand is more for high end properties.
“With rupee depreciation, slowdown in real estate market and government policies including the one on farmhouses in Delhi, this is the right time for NRIs to invest in India,” Jain said.
Delhi-NCR and Mumbai are still the most preferred destinations for NRIs to buy property, a property broker said.
IndiaHomes, a property services company, also saw increased number of enquiries from NRIs for buying properties across segments. “There is an immediate spurt of interest for buying property in India but whether this would translate into actual transactions will only be known after some time,” according to Manish Mehta, Vice President, IndiaHomes.
To cater to the NRI needs, IndiaHomes has customised its home page specific to countries where a potential buyer resides. It is also planning to open offices in the US, West Asia and South-East Asia by end of the year, where it already services customers through the online medium.
On the other hand, Investors Clinic had facilitated 400 transactions for NRIs last year and average investment per NRI was around Rs 3 crore. It already has offices in Singapore and Dubai to tap the huge NRI market and offer customer care services as well as facilitate loans from various banks for its overseas customers.
India received $68.66 billion in 2012 in remittances from its Diaspora last year.
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