A Short History Of Debt
November 14, 2013 Leave a comment
Household Debt In India
February 13, 2013 4 Comments
Financial liabilities of Indian households have gone up sharply from Rs 31,779 crore in FY01 to Rs 2.74 lakh crore in FY12. The decade saw two major trends leading to a sharp rise in consumption expenditure. Home loans have now become popular with no stigma attached any more.The age bar of people opting for home loans has come down from those in mid forties to early thirties.Moreover, the very young have got addicted to credit card spending, leaving them with very little to save. Read more of this post
Some Real Estate Facts To Mull Over
August 21, 2012 11 Comments
(1)Long term returns from residential real estate
Robert Shiller, by tracking the US home prices data from 1890 concluded that in the longer run, property prices grew at an annualised return of around 3%, just keeping pace with inflation.Housing price rises could not outstrip inflation in the long term because, except for land restricted sites, house prices would tend toward building costs plus normal economic profit.
I have no such data for India.But here is what I can attest to:an ancestral house acquired 120 years ago for 6000 Rupees is now valued at 1.2 crores-an annualized return of about 6%.I think this is close to the long term inflation rate in India.
(2)Is home ownership all that it is touted to be?
In a poorer country like Bangladesh, 90% of the houses are owner occupied. Whereas in a richer country like Switzerland, only 33% of the houses are owner occupied.
Europeans are more comfortable with renting compared to Anglo Saxons and we Indians need to decide whose model we choose to follow.Read what Niall Ferguson has to say about property ownership. Read more of this post
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