Motilal Oswal's real estate arm to raise Rs 800 crore via 5th fund

New Delhi : With change in consumer behaviour in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2020 towards housing and residential space, real estate in India is gaining momentum rapidly with firms looking to raise funds.

Motilal Oswal Real Estate (MORE), the real estate private equity arm of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd., is one such firm looking to raise up to Rs 800 crore through its recently launched fifth real estate fund called "India Realty Excellence Fund V (IREF V)."

"What we are witnessing now is euphoria, and the positive influence is coming in. As the lockdown started getting lifted and the views started forming that it (the Covid-19 pandemic) is not as destructive or as fatal as it was thought to be, residential market has been doing exceedingly well," Sharad Mittal, Director and CEO of MORE, told mediapersons here on Wednesday.

The mortgage rate, which stood between 8-8.5 per cent in the pre-Covid-19 and pre-lockdown period, has now come down to 6.7 per cent.

"In the last six months following the nationwide lockdown, we have seen a strong recovery in demand fuelled by multi-decade low mortgage rates, five-year stagnated prices, reducing demand-supply gap in inventory, government support through stamp duty reductions and the genuine need of staying in an owned home during the Covid pandemic.

These factors will lead to a resurgence in residential demand over the next few years. We believe that this is an opportune time to launch our next fund, which will focus on construction finance and post-approval funding," Mittal said.

The firm is aiming to strengthen its ties with existing investors, with whom they have been associated for four years, including Casagrand Group (11 investments), ATS Group (seven investments), Shriram Properties (three investments) and Kolte-Patil Developers (11 investments).

"This is our fifth fund. Majority of our investors would be repeat investors from our previous funds," he added. "In our earlier funds, our investment strategy has been to partner established developers in early-stage investments through structured debt in their mid-income/ affordable housing projects.

We have focused more on IT cities and largely stayed out of Mumbai and Delhi NCR due to the high leverage in these cities. This strategy has worked well for us over the last few years. In our upcoming fund, however, the focus will be to provide construction finance in post-approval projects.

We will continue to work with our preferred partners and capitalise on our existing strategy," Mittal said.