Friday, November 28, 2008

A goldman sachs analyst shared his expectation the other day on cnbc of realty prices correcting 30% or more across much of india in general and in mumbai suburbs and bangalore in particular. In nutshell - he expects a 30% drop from current levels and doesnt see a quick recovery (likely 3+ years). Had been on a "housing tour" last weekend with a couple of friends who recently bought apartments here in borivali; at prices ranging from 6000 to 6170 per sqft. So if we are to believe the analyst, we could see prices dipping to 4200 in borivali in a year or 2. As a one of the friends pointed out that day, banks are currently requiring about 40% equity from home-buyers a sharp increase from the comfortable 10% till only an year or so back. (I remember 10% of the apartment price + stamp duty was all it took to buy a house in 2004 in an all-white transaction). How many middle-income fellas have that kind of cash to put on the table? Not too many i would imagine; especially with many people's funds "blocked" in the present sensex sub-9000 equity market.
Watching our apalling news channels; while the aaj taks star news and zee r busy peppering terror footage with graphics and "danger music", sagarika CNN-IBN ghose is as usual frothing at the mouth asking a bjp leader "will bjp exploit this event to communally divide this country like it always does?" The choice of news channels rt now pretty much boils down to utterly juvenile bullshit on one end of the spectrum to a neatly programmed but heavily biased coverage where opinions are being pushed facts - Are we ever going to get a neatly packaged, sensible, politically unopinionated/centrist news channel?