After building an impressive portfolio in Indian commercial real estate, Brookfield Asset Management is now eyeing residential sector. The Toronto-based financial company has declared that it will soon invest about $1 billion in various Indian residential projects.
“Given the scale of this opportunity, we could land up with very large investments here,” Dev Santani, senior vice president of Brookfield, who heads the financial services and structured credit business, told ET. “At least $1 billion investment in residential projects would just be a beginning.”
Santani also said that Brookfield could sense the pick-up in micro-indicators and the fact that the Indian economy is gathering steam. He also declared that they are here for “long-term with patient capital.”
Interestingly, the asset management company will be investing in Indian residential projects through its global private equity pool. This form of investment will be new to India as not many global institutional investors have done it so far.
Brookfield entered India when it made its first investment in India in 2013 with the acquisition of Unitech Corporate Parks (UCP). So far, the company has invested around $5 billion, mostly towards building Unitech’s commercial portfolio of nearly 24 million sq ft.
Later last year, Brookfield Capital Partners invested $100 million in two Hyderabad residential projects of Incor Infrastructure. So far, the Canadian giant has concluded around 11 transactions across different cities in India totaling $450 million, including last year’s Rs. 800 crore in a Bengaluru-based realty developer.
The company’s top execs reportedly believes that the demand for housing in India is structurally strong and recent implementation of the Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016, has made the sector more accountable. With RERA, the residential real estate will once again look up as there will be a lot of focus now from developers on execution and getting products delivered.