Kaushal Agarwal - Chairman, The Guardians Real Estate Advisory on RBI policy announcement

 

 

"The RBI and especially the MPC are to be commended for maintaining an accommodative stance for the sixth consecutive time now. Their approach towards tackling the situation created by the pandemic and steps taken to help revive the economy will go down in history as being one of the finest. Keeping in mind the disastrous COVID-19 second wave, a slight reduction in the key rates would have been widely celebrated. The reduction would have helped spur growth in demand for real estate assets, which has been severely hit as a result of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Apart from the reduction in stamp duty charges in some parts of the country, the all-time low housing loan rates have given the much-required fillip to sales activity in the last couple of quarters. With the temporary reduction in transaction costs being withdrawn, in states like Maharashtra, the expectation amongst stakeholders of the industry is that the banks should now further sweeten the lending rates, at least till such time that the economy gets back to the pre-COVID levels."