Preferences of US NRIs in Indian Realty
US NRIs have been always keen on investment in their home country. The demand for Indian real estate is estimated to be 25-30 lakh. However, it is not the same case in all the Indian cities. There are end users who want to invest in some specific cities for their families preferences as well as investors looking for time to time returns on investment.
Apartments are the most preferred choice by a majority of NRIs but the demand mainly revolved around units in the price range of Rs 60 lakh to Rs 1.25 crore. Incidentally, NRIs from California region are less interested in villas for cities like Bangalore and Chennai. Other cities that drive demand include Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. However, the demand for Hyderabad has raised especially after the bifurcation of the state into two.
Among the secondary cities that drew demand were Coimbatore, Mysore, Mangalore, etc. There has been a constant demand for medium-term investment in selected options like developed plots in the price range of US$10,000-30,000. NRIs prefer to leverage the appreciation to invest in larger units at a later stage as they are very well aware that land appreciates at a much faster rate in India than any other asset.
Time to time returns on investment through rental income and availability of property management services are among the major criterias for investors to get interested in investment in integrated township projects.
NRIs from cities like Houston show high level of interest towards Indian real estate as their local market does not provide the flexibility of deploying funds locally in order to earn more rental income. Thus, as per the realtors there is a shortage of housing in the local market.
The demand for villas priced over Rs 3 crore did not evince much response as high-end units require specific marketing and not typical property shows targeted to attract all types of investors. Instead exclusive road shows and HNI meet are more better options which would prove to be beneficial for real estate developers while marketing niche products among target audiences. But this has to be well packaged as investors are more interested in the after-sales services offered by the developers through property management companies in today’s scenario.
