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Some Real Estate Facts To Mull Over

August 21, 2012 11 Comments

wealthymatters.com (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

Filed under Theory, Tool Kit Tagged with ancestral house, capital appreciation, Case-Shiller index, depreciation, EMI to income ratio, fluctuations in income, illiquid, inflation rate, keeping pace with inflation, liquidity, long term contracts, Long term returns from residential real estate, monopoly, mortgage insurance, Mortgages, Niall Ferguson, postaday, property ownership, property-owning democracy, real estate investing, rent rate, rent ratio, Robert Shiller, volatility

Community Land Trust

July 16, 2012 Leave a comment

The concept of Community Land Trust (CLT) is something interesting I came across today.

In CLTs, a not-for-profit organisation builds houses on subsidized land and gives them at a price much below the prevailing market rate. The condition is that when the buyer resells the apartment, the price has to be below the market rate prevailing then. This ensures that the subsidies are passed on to the subsequent buyers and the prices are kept at affordable levels for a longer period.

This model can be tweaked to suit local conditions. The State governments can sell or allocate land to cooperatives at subsidised prices to build affordable housing on CLT model.

This model has been successfully adopted in many cities across the world. For example, in Cooper Square land trust project in Manhattan,(pic above), the rentals are below 30 per cent of the tenant’s monthly income, while in the surrounding area people spend 50 per cent of their salary on rent.