The festive season is just around the corner. As the season will begin shortly, the customers will be bombarded with endless schemes and offer by real estate developers telling them that this is the best time to invest in a house.
However, if you are contemplating to buy property solely for the purpose of investment, think again. Various investment advisors and personal finance experts feel that real estate as a pure investment option may not be a very good idea at this juncture.
If you want to put away some money as an investment, think beyond real estate. Owing to the slump in the market over past decade, there has been a huge inventory built-up in the market. As long as the inventory is huge, the prices will remain stagnant.
Despite the positive movement in the real estate sector in 2018, property prices are not moving up as much as investors would want. Since the real estate will not be able to offer much return on investment, it does not seem to be a very good option for an investor.
“Things have started to look up for the sector in 2018,” Rahul Agarwal, Director, Wealth Discovery/EZ Wealth, told Money Control. “However, property prices in the metros, which are taken as the benchmark for the overall health of the real estate sector, are still sluggish to say the least, in-fact in Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Pune the prices are in the negative territory,”
Agarwal further added that on the contrary, the coming festive season is just the right time to buy a house for an end-user. So, someone who is wanting to buy a house for a long time, this is a perfect time. He also said that end users should put their money in ready-to-move-in houses as against ongoing projects, which are scheduled to be delivered at a later date.
Rahul Parikh, CEO, Bajaj Capital, even declared with the publication that it is the perfect market for end users, but not for investors, unless one has a “really long-term horizon and the ability to select projects by developers with low leverage and a good record of timely delivery.”