The realty sector as of now is lull due to the property prices going overboard. The realty firms are in the doldrums as well as their construction costs are going up.
And as if this were not enough, the pulsating middle and upper middle class are also waiting in the wings for the right moment to take the plunge for their dream house.
In this rather dull period, the large NRIs, especially the Malayali and the Punjabi, are on a rampage. If the recent study of Assocham on the real estate scene in India is any indication, the large Malayali and Punjabi NRI community is on a home-purchase spree.
Some of them are also into buying commercial space. This point of the survey looks very convincing as these two communities migrated to others parts of the world in droves, in the past. People from the land of five rivers have been migrating for almost one hundred years, and, the quiet Malayalis have also shown to the world that they are second to none when it comes to going abroad for greener pastures.
Of course, that does not mean that NRIs from other states are not purchasing houses in either their home towns or other parts of the country.
Dr Chandrasekhar Tiwari, an eminent scholar of Delhi University, who has been studying the Indian diaspora from various angles, says that perhaps only those NRIs are buying properties in India who have migrated to other countries during the last 25 years or so. They are still very much close to their roots.
I am pretty sure that those who had shifted before that are not buying properties. They prefer to migrate to countries like Britain, America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia rather than come back to India. Only the first generation NRIs are coming back to India, he opines.
It has been observed that Malayali NRIs prefer to buy some kind of property in their home state cities like Thiruvanathapuram, Trichur, Kottayam, Cochin and the like. Of course, there are many who have purchased houses in metros too.
And, talking about the macho Punabi NRIs, they do not mind buying houses even in Delhi, various NCR towns, as well as the developed cities of their own state. And, unlike the Malayali NRIs, they buy commercial properties too.
Anil Sharma, CMD of Amrapali group, says that more often than not NRIs buy flats in the price range of Rs 60 lakhs to Rs 80 lakhs. They buy properties for purely investment purpose. There is hardly any emotional factor involved in it. As and when the property appreciates to the desired level, they dispose it off.
Devender Gupta of real estate advisory Century 21 informs that the first choice of rich Indians, in terms of buying some property, is definitely Bangalore. Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon and Hydrabad are a close second. When Punjabi NRIs visit here, many of them also look for plots that they can develop themselves.
For that purpose, they find Zirakpur, near Chandigarh, and Greater Noida very attractive,' says Gupta. Josy Joy, a Malayali doctor settled in Dubai, says that he has been living in Dubai for the last 20 years. I do not think that I would ever return to India as I am very well placed there.
This is also true for a very large number of NRIs in the Gulf. However, I would love to buy houses in both Delhi and in Kottayam, even though I have an ancestral house in a village close to Thiruvanathapuram.
Tiwari says that not only the Malayali and the Punjabi, but NRIs from other states too buy houses in their own state or some other big cities. As far as Bihari NRIs are concerned, they hardly buy properties in their own state. They perhaps know the ground realities of Bihar. They also know that buying a property would not fetch them anything.
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