Sridhar: Hopeful

New Delhi, Sept. 9: The National Housing Bank (NHB) today said it expected interest rates on home loans to start falling from January.

“Interest rates are likely to come down from January and we expect the home loan rates to fall after that,” S. Sridhar, chairman and managing director of the NHB, told The Telegraph.

He said the increase in interest rate by the Reserve Bank of India had resulted in a spurt in home loan rates. “We expect home loans to stabilise to around 10 per cent in the near term.”

Sridhar said the disbursal of home loans had been growing steadily and the rising interest rate had not affected it.

In the last fiscal, home loans grew at a healthy pace of 20 per cent. While disbursement by banks grew 14-15 per cent, loans from financial companies grew 24 per cent.

“This year, too, the trend appears to be similar, but it is too early to form a definitive view,” he said.

Sridhar said the bank had launched NHB Residex to monitor residential property prices in Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangalore and Bhopal.

He said 10 more cities would be added in the next two months and over 60 cities would be covered over the next two years. The index would be refreshed every six months, which would give a good idea of the property prices in the country and city-specific realty movement.

The NHB, which recently picked up a 12.5 per cent stake in Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services Ltd, for an undisclosed sum, plans to focus on rural housing finance.

Sridhar said the bank would soon launch fixed deposit products and the capital would be used to fund rural homes

“We are studying the market condition. We will launch fixed deposit products soon. Given our changed focus to facilitate rural housing and growing business in terms of loan refinancing and direct project financing, we have decided to mobilise public money through fixed deposits,” he said.