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'Sitting ducks': $63 bn of zombie buildings sound alarm for Indian banks

As lenders stop new credit, builders are forced to offload properties

Big listed real estate companies drive profits home in a dull market
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India's five-year property boom halted a year ago when Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd., a shadow banker, filed for bankruptcy.

Suvashree Ghosh and Dhwani Pandya | Bloomberg
Ashish Shah is caught in the middle of India’s latest financial crisis. As chief operating officer of Radius Developers, he’s struggling to fund construction of apartment complexes because of a liquidity crunch in the nation’s bloated shadow-banking sector.

“Real estate is a sitting duck,” said Shah. “The timing is very crucial as the slowdown has hit the real estate market quite hard. The industry can’t service interest, new interest, additional interest, because there is no cash flow.”

Radius and hundreds of other developers relied on loans from what India calls non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to fuel a five-year property boom.