'Private equity investment in Indian real estate at $4.9 bn during January-June'

Private equity investors invested around $4.9 billion or Rs 33,700 crore in the Indian real estate market during the January-June period of 2018, a Knight Frank report said here on Wednesday.

Factors such as implementation of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act and the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, infrastructure status to affordable housing projects, relaxation of norms to encourage Real Estate Investment Trust listings among other encouraged investments into the sector, the report said.

"In the first six months of 2018, $4.9 billion (Rs 33,700 crore) has been invested across 31 deals with an average investment per deal of $158 million (Rs 1,080 crore)," it said.

In 2017, private equity investment in the Indian real estate sector reached $8.6 billion, it added.

The report also said that in the coming years, there is a "greater probability that we may witness a blip in the annual PE (private equity) investments" as the assets that were transacted between January, 2016 and March, 2018 in the big ticket deals have a long gestation period and would take more than a decade to mature and become operationally efficient.

In the office space market, private equity investment was $2,784 million during the first six months of 2018, it said.

--IANS

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