Shares of real estate companies jumped sharply on June 8 after the Reserve Bank of India announced several measures to improve credit flow to the sector and boost demand.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das during the monetary policy statement announced measures such as enhancing individual housing loans limits for cooperative banks and allowing rural cooparative banks to lend to commercial real estate projects.
The measures sparked rally in shares of DLF, Macrotech Developers, Oberoi Realty, Sobha, Brigade Enterprises, and Godrej Properties, which rose 2-3 percent.
“Taking into account the increase in housing prices since the limits were last revised and considering the customer needs, it has been decided to increase the existing limits on individual housing loans by cooperative banks,” the RBI said in its statement on developmental and regulatory policies.
The central bank has revised the limit for individual housing loans for Tier-I urban cooperative banks to Rs 60 lakh from Rs 30 lakh earlier. The same limit for Tier-II urban cooperative banks has been raised to Rs 140 lakh from Rs 70 lakh earlier.
As for rural cooperative banks, the limit on individual housing loans has been enhanced to Rs 50 lakh from Rs 20 lakh earlier for banks with assessed net worth less than Rs 100 crore. For rural cooperative banks of net worth of more than Rs 100 crore, the limit will now stand at Rs 75 lakh as against Rs 30 lakh earlier.
Investors were of the perception that the enhanced limit for housing loans by cooperative banks will further boost demand for residential properties. Residential housing has seen an upswing in demand since the onset of the pandemic to due to higher savings and governments sops.
Further, the central bank has now permitted state cooperative banks and district cooperative banks to dish out loans to commercial real estate – residential projects to the extent of 5 percent of their assets.
RBI said that its move was in consideration of the growing need for affordable housing and to realise these banks’ potential in providing credit facilities to the housing sector.
At 10:48am, the Nifty Realty index was up 2.4 percent at 405.8 on the National Stock Exchange.
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