Reasons to not give up on Indian real estate

Real estate may be down in the dumps right now. But even so, compared with most other big businesses, At its core, real estate is the coolest even in failure. You build an airline on leased planes and if it fails all that the lenders are left with is a brand with which they can have ‘Good Times’ while humming Oo La La, La, La, Le, Oo. If real estate fails, lenders to the project still have the land and nothing as an asset gets as real as this.

Yet, it’s been a business that most respectable entrepreneurs have so far shied away from because it’s a trade vilified—mostly for the right reasons. For one, real estate has been the coolest way to generate and park slush funds for political parties. Much of the surging value of real estate springs from picking obscure land on the cheap and watching the location turn into gold after everyone else realizes it’s right next to a Metro station. Political interests in the sector and the need for cash in the business to pay bribes in order to get the dozens of required approvals gave real estate in India a bad image.