r2i forum

r2roots;82094Congratulations and good luck on your r2i plans. Looks like you have given enough thought to your plans.

Quick question for you - are you going to give up your GC in the pipeline? If no, how do you plan to keep it going?[/quote]

etrast75;82131At this point, I have decided to abandon my GC process. Since GC is based on a future employment offer, I believe a company can process GC even though the person may not be present in US (Please correct me if I am wrong). So, if I wanted, I guess I could have pushed my company to keep processing my GC. I just wanted to have one less thing to worry about I guess.
If I do find that R2i is not my cup of tea (I sincerely hope not) and wanted to r2a, I guess I can always get another 6 years h1. I just hope it does not come down to that.

aagrawal98;82200Good luck with your R2I plans. Hope things work out the best for you and your family.

Why do you expect the Indian RE market to crash as the US market did because of sub-prime? There is no sub-prime in India, besides RBI in the last year or so in its efforts to curtail inflation has been soaking up excess liquidity out of the market. This has caused the home loan rates to peak and RE market to stabilize and in some cases the prices have gone down. Home loan rates are in fact beginning to come down now. In my opinion now to next six months is a good time to buy RE in India. You do of course need to shop around, do your due diligence and negotiate hard.[/quote]

I could go on forever (probably write a 4 page article) on the reasons I think the RE market in India in headed for a crash in the next 5-10 years if not earlier. I will try to highlight a few of my thoughts here.

Few disclaimers are in order

I do not have any background in Real Estate nor do I have any inside knowledge on the working of Indian real estate market.

This is just my personal opinions having read a lot of articles on how real estate markets and economics in general. So for all I know I could be dead wrong about the Indian RE market and I would end up paying a lot more than I would have had I bought one now.

RE , in my opinion, is always a matter of supply and demand (just like any other commodity). Indian RE Market has long been under the control of a few vested interests (mostly politicians and people connected to them) who have somehow managed to keep the supply in check in order for the demand to be high and thus prices have been high compared to wages that people earn. I think it is ridiculous that I have to pay anywhere between 60-1cr (150-250k USD) for a decent 3bhk apartment and 1.5-3 cr (400-750K USD ) for a decent Independent house in a place which has some kind of infrastructure. NRI money has helped boost the bubble but I think NRI money will start drying up in the years to come.

With the development of infrastructure (mostly roads) that is taking place all over india (especially large cities), I expect much more land to be available for development in the coming years. With decent connectivity, people will not care if they have to commute long distances to get to work (the whole concept of american suburbia is based on that) if they find a property at an affordable price.

I understand that the Indian RE market is different from US RE market and probably very unique when compared to the RE markets of all other developed countries but I do believe that the basic concepts apply here.

Also the fact that Large Companies are getting into the RE development (especially residential) will in someways help. If a company is not able to sell something at a certain price, they will be willing to drop the price much more quickly than say a small scale independent developer just to get the property off their hands.

Having said all that, I expect our politicians to fight tooth and nail to keep their control over the whole RE market but in the coming years they will find that they are fighting the battle against some really big companies who cannot be easily intimidated when compared to some small companies or individuals.

Bottom line, more supply of any item, less the price.

There is another aspect to the whole thing linked to liquidity, availability of credit, wages and the general health of the economy which could also play a role.

Again just my personal opinions..

etrast75;82240I could go on forever (probably write a 4 page article) on the reasons I think the RE market in India in headed for a crash in the next 5-10 years if not earlier. [/quote]
I have similar opinion about Indian especially Hyderabad RE and I believe there's a higher probability of a crash than a raise in RE prices. I got worried about this trend 3 years back and stopped investing in Hyderabad RE. My last RE commitment was made in early 2004 and after that I didn't had the guts to buy anything. I myself find it hard to justify the 1500% growth in 7 years in some of the properties I own.