Published by Newsroom June 12th, 2009 in Newsbytes.
After mutual funds and insurance firms, it is now stock brokers who have begun selling flats and commercial spaces to prospective clients. Things are beginning to look up for brokers who had diversified into real estate distribution after broking and third party distribution revenues dried up for them, towards the second half of 2008, reports Shailesh Menon from Mumbai.
Seeing opportunities to make money, several broking firms are in the process of setting up real estate advisory business to cater to their affluent clients. While Sebi does not allow brokers to advise on or sell real estate assets, most broking firms have formed separate companies to take up realty advisory business. A few entities (also having broking operations among other businesses relating to finance) who have begun operating in this segment are Unicon Financial Intermediaries (through Unicon Real Estate), Artha Money, SMC Capital, ICICI Housing Finance (cross-selling through ICICI Direct) and HDFC (cross-selling through HDFC Securities).
If market watchers are to be believed, Religare Enterprises, which recently launched its home finance business, is considering a foray into real estate advisory business; Birla Sunlife Asset Management has begun offering real estate advisory services for offshore clients.
According to sources, the AMC has also launched an offshore real estate fund hoping to collect around Rs 2,500 crore from overseas investors — mostly from Gulf countries and Latin America. The turnaround in market,s coupled with a fall in real estate prices and a dip in interest rates, have done good for brokers who double up as real estate distributors.
While the initial months (the trend to start real estate advisory business started in the second half of 2008) were tough, things are beginning to look up for stock brokers who are now selling more spaces to prospective customers.
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