Black Money

Properties shouldn’t get expensive: Real estate consultants are just rigging home prices

India-Real-Estate-Market

Vivek Kaul

The American author Upton Sinclair once said that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
This seems to be true about the “so called” real estate consultants who operate in this country. Their main job it seems is to bring out a research report every few months, where the conclusion is that “real estate prices will continue to go up”.
This despite the fact when their own data contradicts this conclusion. Let’s take the case of a recent research report titled India Real Estate Outlook brought out by Knight Frank. The report takes a look at the real estate scenario prevailing across some of the biggest cities in India.
In the case of Mumbai, the report points out that there is a huge demand-supply gap. The unsold inventory of residential apartments in the city stands at 2,13,742 units. In June 2014, the quarters-to-sell ratio stood at 12.
“Quarters-to-sell(QTS) can be explained as the number of quarters required to exhaust the existing unsold inventory in the market. The existing unsold inventory is divided by the average sales velocity of the preceding eight quarters in order to arrive at the QTS number for that particular quarter,” the report points out.
What this means is that it will take close to three years to exhaust the existing number of unsold residential apartments in Mumbai, if people continue to buy homes at the rate they have been in the preceding two years. What is interesting is that the unsold inventory has gone up dramatically over the last few years. In December 2011 the number had stood at five, the report points out. This means that in December 2011, it would have taken around one year and three months to dispose of the inventory of unsold residential apartments in Mumbai. By June 2014, the number had increased to three years.
What this tells us is that the supply of residential apartments in Mumbai is substantially more than their demand. And anyone who understands basic economics will know that in order to clear this inventory the real estate companies need to cut prices, so that people come out and buy these unsold apartments.
Nevertheless, the Knight Frank report goes around to conclude that “On the residential price front…the forecasted increase for the entire year (2014) is 10.1%.” It goes on to explain the reasons for this forecast. “This period [the first six months of 2014] has seen significant completion of transit infrastructure that has the potential to alter the dynamics of the region’s property market,” the report points out. The Versova-Ghatkpoar Metro, the Eastern Freeway and the Santacruz-Chembur Link Road are some of these projects.
The report writers forget(or rather ignore) a rather fundamental point here about how markets operate. Markets start factoring in information well in advance. They don’t wait for a particular development to be completed before factoring in that information into the price. An excellent example of this are the real estate prices in parts of Navi Mumbai, which are close to the proposed new airport. The airport is nowhere in the picture, but prices have been driven up for years, around this story.
Hence, the infrastructure that the report points out to, has already been there in the minds of people for a while now. And if they had been so impressed by it, they would be buying homes, and the quarters-to-sell ratio would have come down. Now that as the report points out, hasn’t happened, making the point irrelevant. Another reason, which is a favourite with most research report writers these days, has also been offered. Now that Narendra Modi is in power, things will improve and people will buy more homes.
As mathematician John Allen Paulos writes A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market “Because so much information is available…something insightful sounding can always be said.” But what sounds insightful need not be correct.
The question that the research report does not answer is: why have the real estate prices in Mumbai going up, despite the fact that people haven’t been buying residential apartments. The Residex Index of National Housing Bank points out that real estate prices in Mumbai have risen by 18.7% between the end of December 2011 and March 2014. This despite the fact that the inventory of unsold residential homes has been growing dramatically. In this scenario, where people are not buying as many homes as are being produced, prices should have been falling and not going up.
The reason for this is straightforward. The real estate market in India is rigged in favour of real estate companies and politicians who are the real owners of these companies. There is no free market in real estate. Most real estate companies are fronts for politicians. What makes this very clear is the fact that even though there are thousands of real estate companies operating across India, there is not a single pan India real estate company.
And these politicians and their real estate companies have an incentive in holding the prices to be high. They operate as a cartel to do that. Of course, no real estate consultant can “afford” to talk about these reasons given that they make their money from real estate companies. And real estate companies would want its consultants to keep constantly mouthing the lines that “prices will
continue to go up”. The research reports brought out by these real estate consultants play precisely that role. They help in managing the price expectations in the minds of prospective buyers.
Whenever such a report is released, its splashed all over the media. The media, in turn, because it depends on advertising from real estate companies, tends to highlight the price escalation and the sales will increase part (or they just don’t bother to read beyond the press release). They don’t bother to ask the most fundamental question: If there is so much inventory, why are prices going up? Take the case of South Mumbai. As the report points out “the inventory level in the South Mumbai market will take the maximum time of 18 quarters (4.5 years) to sell. The age of inventory, calculated as the time elapsed since launch, is also the longest, at 15 quarters.” So why are prices still rising is something that no one has bothered to ask?
This is how real estate consultants help real estate companies manage price expectations in the minds of prospective consumers. So, the next time you read a report saying real estate prices will go up, check for the source. If a real estate consultant is saying so, the information needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. As Guy Sorman writes in An Optimist’s Diary “Economic actors don’t all have the same information at their disposal. Without institutions to improve transparency, insiders can easily manipulate markets.” This is precisely what is happening in India—the insiders have managed to take all of us for a ride.

The article originally appeared on www.Firstbiz.com on Aug 30, 2014

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

What Modi can do to bring acche din for home buyers

India-Real-Estate-Market
Vivek Kaul


People have taken the Bhartiya Janata Party’s election slogan “acche din aane waale hain”a little too literally. I have often been asked on the social media over the past few weeks whether real estate prices will fall, now that Narendra Modi government is in power. I wish I had a definitive answer for that.
Nevertheless, there are many things that the Modi government can do so that home prices start to mirror the actual demand from people looking to buy homes to live in. Right now, a major part of home demand comes from investors and speculators looking to park their money. How can this be taken care of?
There are a number of steps that can be taken.
a) The Modi government wants to get back the black money Indians have stashed away internationally. As per data from Global Financial Integrity, this amounted to a whopping $644 billion as of 2011. While the intention to get back all this black money is certainly noble, how practical is it? Also, if the idea is to recover black money then why discriminate between those who have managed to transfer the money abroad and those who haven’t.
It will be certainly easier to recover black money that is still there in the country. Also, the amount of black money that has remained in the country is likely to be significantly more than what has left the shores. A lot of this money has been diverted into buying real estate. This link between black money and real estate needs to be broken.
Former finance minister in the budget speechhe made on February 28, 2013, said “There are 42,800 persons – let me repeat, only 42,800 persons – who admitted to a taxable income exceeding Rs 1 crore per year.” This number is totally unbelievable given that nearly 27,000 luxury cars are sold in India each year. Over and above this estimates made KPMG suggest that there around 1.25 lakh high networth individuals in India who have an investible wealth of at least a million dollars(around Rs 6 crore), and also own a house and other durables.
What this clearly tells us is that as a nation we barely pay taxes. This means we are generating a lot of black money. A large amount of this money goes into real estate, and ensures that real estate prices remain firm. This wouldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of the highly corrupt Income Tax department.
In fact, the Modi government could do some out of the box thinking like the Greek government, to recover this black money. The Greek government used Google Earth to track those who have swimming pools and then cross indexed their address with the amount of tax they are paying. Ideas along similar lines need to be come up with. The property dealers of the National Capital Region and the amount of taxes they pay, will be a good target to start with.
If real estate prices need to fall, more and more people need to be forced to report their income properly and made to be paid a tax on it.
b)One of the most well kept secrets of the Income Tax Act is that it actually encourages people to speculate in real estate. There is no restriction on the number of homes against which you can claim a tax deduction on the interest paid on the home loan to fund the property. Only one of these properties needs to categorized as a self-occupied property. On this self-occupied property, an interest of up to Rs 1.5 lakh can be claimed as a tax deduction.
But this limit does not apply to the remaining homes that an individual may choose to buy. Any amount of interest paid on home loans can be claimed as a deduction as long as a “notional rent” is added to the income. We all know that these days “rents” are relatively low in comparison to the EMIs that need to be paid in order to repay the home loan. Hence, the interest component tends to be massive during the initial years and helps people with two or more homes, claim huge tax deductions.
This “loophole” has been used effectively by well paid corporate employees to bring down their taxable income over the years. People who use this deduction are more interested in claiming the deduction than actually making money from an increase in price. Hence, they are likely not to sell, even in a scenario where prices may be falling.
While offering a tax deduction on a self occupied property makes some sense, there is no logic to offering a tax deduction on a home, one is not living in. This “loophole” needs to be plugged immediately.
c) The Modi government needs to work towards building a credible real estate index. Currently, there is no way of figuring out which way the real estate market is heading. Are prices rising? Are they flat? Or are they falling? These are important questions for anyone looking to buy a home to live in. Brokers will always tell you that prices are going up. Real estate consultants bring out reports on home prices, now and then. But given that they make their money from real estate companies, these reports needed to treated with a pinch of salt.
The National Housing Bank does have a real estate index. But not many people know about it. Also, it is a quarterly index, and by the time the data actually comes out, it is not of much use. As of now the datafor up to December 2013 is available. But we are already in June 2014. The government needs to look at building an index along the lines of the Case-Shiller real estate indices in the United States. This will not lead to results immediately but will really help over a long term.
d) In the short term the government needs to look at the real estate lending of banks closely. Most recent data released by the Reserve Bank of India shows that between April 19, 2013 and April 18, 2014, the overall bank lending grew by 13.9%. During the same period the lending to commercial real estate grew by a significantly higher 19.8%.
This, in an environment where real estate companies have huge inventories. So, why are banks lending money to real estate companies? And what are real estate companies doing with that money? One possible explanation is that banks have been giving fresh loans to real estate companies so that the companies can repay their old loans. This has allowed real estate companies to not cut prices on their unsold inventory and ensure that prices do not fall.
This is something that needs to be looked into closely.
e) These days more and more real estate companies seem to be interested in launching new projects, rather than delivering the homes that they have already sold to the consumer. Companies use the money they raise for new projects to pay off interest on debt as well as repay debt that they have taken on over the years. Hence, there is no money left to build homes.
In this situation, the only way left for the company to raise more money to build homes is by launching newer projects. The money raised for one project is used to pay off interest on outstanding debt as well repay debt that is maturing. In order to build homes promised under the project, another project needs to be launched. This leads to the first project being delayed. To build homes promised under the second project a third project needs to be launched.
And so the cycle continues. In order break this cycle, the idea of a real estate regulator had been proposed a while back. That does not seem to have gone anywhere. It needs to be re-considered, even though it may not lead to immediate results.
If these steps are taken in the days to come, there might be some relief for people looking to buy homes to live in.
The article originally appeared on www.FirstBiz.com on June 13, 2014 

(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

Only in black: This example shows all that is wrong with Indian real estate

India-Real-Estate-MarketVivek Kaul
I had an interesting conversation with an relative of mine early last month.
This gentleman had bought a flat in the Delhi sub-city of Dwarka sometime in 2002 at a price of around Rs 25 lakh. The area was totally undeveloped at that point of time and hence property was going cheap.
More than a decade later the flat is now worth something around Rs 2 crore. The flat had been bought as an investment. My relative planned to sell the flat and use the money to meet the expenses of his daughter’s education (she wants to do an MBA/PhD from a good university in the United States) as well as her wedding.
The balance that remained after meeting his daughter’s expenses would go into his retirement fund, given that he has no plans of working beyond the age of 63-64.
During the course of our conversation I suggested to him that it would be a good idea to sell the flat and invest the money into different debt mutual funds. The logic being that Rs 2 crore was more than enough to meet his daughter’s education and wedding expenses and at the same time add to his retirement kitty.
So it made sense to preserve the Rs 2 crore that he had managed to accumulate by investing in the flat, rather than look for more gain. Also, by investing in debt funds, the return that he would earn would be similar to a fixed deposit but the after tax returns would much better given that he could take indexation into account while calculating his taxes. Indexation essentially allows the cost of purchase of a flat to be adjusted for inflation.
The after tax returns would be in the range of 7-8% and he could make a decent Rs 14-16 lakh every year, which would further compound, if he stayed invested.
He liked the idea and decided to sell his flat. Given that the flat was in a good society, he got several good offers. But even one month later he has not been able to sell the flat.
He called me yesterday and told me that he hadn’t been able to implement the plan I had suggested to him, around a month back. The reason for that was very simple. Although he had got offers from several buyers willing to buy the flat at Rs 2 crore, none of them were willing to pay him the entire amount in white, through a cheque. The buyers typically were ready to pay around Rs 80 lakh in cheque and the remaining Rs 1.2 crore in cash.
As mentioned earlier my relative had bought the flat at Rs 25 lakh, most of which was financed through a home loan. The remaining came from the savings he and his wife had put together. So all the money to buy the flat had been paid in ‘white’. He had been lucky given that the builder he had bought the flat from was building his first project and was more interested in offloading what he had built, rather than insist on being paid in black.
The property dealers my relative had been dealing with to sell the flat had clearly told him that if he wanted the entire Rs 2 crore to be paid in cheque, then he could more or less forget about selling the flat. At best, they could get a buyer who would pay upto Rs 1 crore in cheque, the remaining Rs 1 crore would be paid in cash.
For someone who has largely lead an honest life, he couldn’t figure out how would he would go around handling cash to the tune of Rs 1 crore. The brokers had a solution for this as well. They could help him buy gold bars. Or if he was willing to bet his money on real estate again, they could showcase some projects coming up on the outskirts of Gurgaon or on the way to Agra. Maybe he could buy two flats there, they suggested. And if he found all this too risky, he could simply store away the money in a couple of bank lockers. Even that could be arranged for, it was suggested.
My relative’s situation is a very good example of all that is wrong with the Indian estate real system as it has evolved. Since a major part of the transaction is in black, the cash that is thus generated needs to be put to use in some way. Just putting it away in a locker isn’t really a solution.
Money needs to keep growing. The amount paid in black can also be used to buy more real estate. For a flat which costs Rs 80 lakh, half the money i.e. Rs 40 lakh, needs to be paid through a cheque, and the remaining Rs 40 lakh can be paid in cash, brokers suggested to my relative.
This also means that Rs 40 lakh of the Rs 1 crore that my relative had received in white would be put to use and become tax free. The law gives a tax payers two years from the date of the sale to invest in another ‘residential’ property. If the property is under construction, a period of three years is allowed. The amount invested becomes tax free.
As mentioned earlier Rs 40 lakh of the Rs 1 crore received in black, would be utilised to buy a flat. That means Rs 60 lakh would still remain. This can be used to buy gold. Gold can be easily stored and hidden.
The point is if a real estate investor wants to sell his property, he has to be ready to receive payment in black. If he doesn’t want to be paid in black, it will be very difficult for him to sell his property. Once he has sold the property and received the money, he needs to put the ‘black’ money to use again.
This means buying more real estate in an up and coming location, where the prices are low. And so the cycle of black money continues with investors selling to each other, driving up prices and making real estate unaffordable for those who want to buy a ‘home’ to live in.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 2, 2013 
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek) 

10 things the Cobrapost sting tells us

king cobra

Vivek Kaul

Stings in India till now have been carried out to expose politicians. The Cobrapost sting is the first sting that has brought into the public domain the murky way in which the big Indian private banks operate. But more than just exposing the murky way in which big banks operate, the sting brings out in the open other uncomfortable truths as well.

1. The finance minister P Chidambaram in his recent budget speech had said “There are 42,800 persons – let me repeat, only 42,800 persons – who admitted to a taxable income exceeding Rs 1 crore per year.” Of course no one took that number seriously. We now know why.
The Cobrapost sting clearly shows us that there are many more people with a taxable income of more than Rs 1 crore. The straightforward and more than helpful way in which the banks were ready to help invest the black money of the ‘supposed’ politician that the Cobrapost reporter was fronting for, can only tell us one thing: Banks seem to be doing this regularly.
And given this we can only conclude that there are many people out there with taxable incomes of more than Rs 1 crore, who don’t pay tax, than just 42,800. While it’s an obvious conclusion that did not need this visual evidence, but it is still an important conclusion nonetheless.
2. The second thing that the sting tells us is that those who have black money do not keep all of it under their mattresses. A lot of it as we know goes into buying real estate (largely benami). But the holders of black money seem to like to diversify their hoarded “wealth”. As the Cobrapost press release points out “(Banks) accept huge amounts of cash and invest it in insurance products and gold.” The money invested in insurance products is in turn invested in stocks, government securities and financial securities issued by corporations. So hoarders of black money do seem to be following the age old investing principle of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. They seem to be buying everything. From gold. To real estate. To stocks. And even have money in fixed deposits with banks.
3. By investing at least in gold and fixed deposits, hoarders of black money also show us that they like to have some liquidity in the assets that they own. Real estate is not terribly liquid and neither are insurance policies.
4. The sting also shows our love for gold which goes with the large amount of black money in this country. Very small amounts of gold can be used to store a large amount of black money as wealth. India has lot of gold because Indians love it is the normal claim that is made, but India also has a lot of gold because there is a lot of black money floating around.
5. The good bit is that instead of just lying around under the mattresses of people, some of the black money is coming into the financial system. When people buy insurance policies which in turn buy either debt securities issued by the government or the private sector or invest in shares issued by a company getting listed on the stock exchange, they are in some way financing someone who needs the money. That is the ultimate job of any financial system. To move money from those who have it, to those who need it. Now what proportion of the total black money comes into the financial system, that no one has any clue off. But its better than people just channelising all their black money into land and other forms of real estate. Also as more of this money comes into the financial system the greater are its chances of being detected.
6. The other interesting thing is that banks are helping channelise black money into insurance and not mutual funds. The main reason for this is the fact that insurance companies pay a much higher commission than mutual funds do, even though mutual funds remain a much superior mode of investing. It also goes with the cross selling that banks tend to do these days given that almost all of them own insurance companies. So if you have ever wondered why the moment you enter a bank they try to sell you all kind of insurance policies and not attend to the need you really went there for, you now know the answer.
7. Another major reason for banks selling insurance and not mutual funds to this set of clientèle who wants to put its black money to work is the fact that the know your customer (KYC) norms for mutual funds are much stronger than those required to invest in insurance. This is clearly an anomaly that needs to be done away with. Either mutual fund KYC norms need to be weakened or insurance KYC norms need to be strengthened. If it was not for these KYC norms, mutual funds remain a better way of hoarding black money given that they are very liquid. You can buy a mutual fund today and sell out tomorrow (unless you are buying a tax saving mutual fund that comes with a lock-in of three years). The same is not possible in case of insurance which comes in with a minimum lock-in of five years. Hence, mutual funds also need to be provided equal access to black money as insurance has. Also someone who has a lot of black money and is wealthy, doesn’t really need to pay for the “pure” insurance that compulsorily comes with the investment oriented insurance plans.
8. The sting also tells us that banks have double standards. If you are ready to deposit/invest a lot of money with/through them, then they are more than ready to lay out the red carpet for you. If you are not, then try changing your address once and wait for all the proofs they want. Or try asking for a locker, and wait for the bank clerk/relationship manager to tell you that you will also have to open a fixed deposit of a few lakhs to get a locker. Meanwhile as the Cobrapost press release points banks “ allot lockers for the safekeeping of the illegitimate cash, including special large size lockers to accommodate crores of hard cash.” Or try depositing money and the bank clerk will give you a nasty look for having to count the total amount of money you are depositing. Whereas if you have black money, the bank will come to your residence to collect it. As the Cobrapost press release points out the bank will “personally come to the residence of the client to take the black money deal forward and collect the cash, even bring along counting machine.” Wow.
9. What the sting also tells us is that how simple it is to create a fake identity in this country. The rapist Bitti Mohanty could do it. So can you if you have black money. And the banks will help you with it. As the Cobrapost press release points out “ICICI Bank officials were ready to make a suitable profile for the client, such as showing him as an agriculturist or engaged in some business, so as to make the investment unquestionable. On the other hand, Axis Bank officials proved to be a notch above in inventing fraudulent means. Use “sundry” accounts of the bank, they suggested, to deposit all the illegal cash from where it is to be routed into investment. Either use accounts of other customers, for a fee, to transfer money abroad, or use some shell company and take away a chunk of foreign currency as expenses toward business-cum-leisure trips.”
10. And to conclude, what the sting clearly tells us is that everybody who pays Income Tax in this country is basically an idiot who is being taken for a royal ride. If you have a lot of black money and you are not paying tax on it, chances are somebody out there is waiting for you with a red carpet.
Please go find him.

The < a href="http://www.firstpost.com/business/10-things-that-the-cobrapost-sting-tells-us-about-banks-661376.html">article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on March 14, 2013 

(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek) 

 

Chidu expects you to spend Rs 25,000 to save Rs 2,500

 P-CHIDAMBARAMVivek Kaul
A seemingly popular measure announced in today’s budget is the increase in the tax deduction allowed on home loan interest by Rs 1 lakh. Currently a deduction of Rs 1.5 lakh is allowed to someone buying his first home.
The extra deduction of Rs 1 lakh comes with caveats. The first caveat is that the house should be bought during the period between April 1, 2013 and March 31, 2014. The home loan taken should not be more than Rs 25 lakh. And the value of the house being bought should not exceed Rs 40 lakh (something that the finance minister P Chidambaram did not talk about in his budget speech). Chidambaram felt that this move will “promote home ownership and give a fillip to a number of industries like steel, cement, brick, wood, glass etc. besides jobs to thousands of construction workers.”
Let us try and understand why nothing of that sort is going to happen anywhere other than the imagination of Chidambaram. Let us say an individual who falls in the top tax bracket of 30%, takes a home loan of Rs 25 lakh at an interest of 10.5% to be repaid over a period of twenty years. The equated monthly instalment (EMI) to repay this loan would work out to around Rs 24,960. Lets assume this to be Rs 25,000 for the ease of calculation.
What is the extra saving that the individual makes? He gets a tax break of extra Rs 1 lakh. Given that he is in the 30% tax bracket, this means an yearly saving of Rs 30,000 (again lets ignore the 3% education cess for the ease of calculation). This essentially means an added saving of Rs 2,500 per month (Rs 30,000/12).
So what Chidambaram wants us to believe is that people of this country would start paying EMIs of Rs 25,000, in order to make an extra saving of Rs 2,500? No wonder he went to Harvard.
There are other problems with this deduction as well. The deduction is available only for the financial year 2013-2014 (or the assessment year 2014-2015). If the complete deduction is not used in 2013-2014, the remaining part can be used in 2014-2015(or the assessment year 2015-2016). The point is that the deduction is largely available only once. To imagine that people would buy homes to make use of what is essentially a one time deduction is stretching it rather too much. Of course the market understands this. The BSE Realty Index is down around 2.7% from yesterday’s close as I write this.
People don’t buy homes to get a tax deduction. The average middle class Indian buys a home to stay in it. And for that to happen a couple of things need to happen. The real estate prices need to fall from their current atrocious levels. And interest rates also need to fall for EMIs to become affordable.
In fact this is where another comment made by Chidambaram during the course of the speech that makes immense sense. As he said “There are 42,800 persons – let me repeat, only 42,800 persons – who admitted to a taxable income exceeding Rs 1 crore per year.”
This is nothing but a joke. There must be more people earning more than Rs 1 crore in South Delhi, let alone all of India. What this tells us very clearly is that there is a tremendous amount of black money in this country. And all these ill gotten gains are stashed away by buying real estate. This ensures that there are more investors/speculators in the real estate market, than genuine buyers.
Unless this nexus is broken down there is no way anyone who actually needs a house to live in, to be able to actually buy one.
As far as EMIs are concerned they will only come down once interest rates start falling. And for that to happen the government needs to control its borrowing. The borrowing will fall only once the fiscal deficit is under control. Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends.
And I don’t see any of these two things happening in the near future. Neither will black money in the system come down nor will the fiscal deficit fall leading to a fall in interest rates.
Chidambaram ended his speech by quoting his favourite poet Saint Tiruvalluvar. Let me end this piece by quoting one my favourite poets, Bashir Badr. 
Musaafir ke raste badalte rahe,
muqaddar mein chalna thaa chalte rahe
Mohabbat adaavat vafaa berukhi,
kiraaye ke ghar the badalate rahe
So the moral of the story is that we will continue to live in rented houses, changing them every 11 months, when the contract runs out.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on February 28, 2013
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets at @kaul_vivek)