Edelweiss Housing Finance is set to expand its presence in the South, with a presence in Chennai by the year-end.

The housing finance institution, which recently opened an office in Bangalore, is to enter Hyderabad next, and before the year-end will be in Chennai, according to Mr Anil Kothuri, Chief Executive Officer, Edelweiss Housing. The team is in place in Chennai, and the operations will be launched soon, he said.

Mumbai and Delhi are its largest markets, and major metros will account for more than two-thirds of its business.

Under the current high home loan interest scenario, developers will have to make it ‘more interesting' for the buyers to start purchases. One good feature is that the RBI has indicated that further hikes in policy rates are unlikely, after announcing the 25-basis-point hike in repo rates to 8.5 per cent earlier this week, which is bound to drive up lending rates.

But demand for home loans continues to hold, despite a 24 per cent increase in EMIs during the past year. One good new for borrowers is that they will no longer need to pay a penalty on prepaying home loans. Large housing finance institutions are coming out with incentives, such as teaser rates to reduce the cost for home loan borrowers in the initial years.

However, in Mumbai and Delhi, prices seem to be buoyant, and price corrections aren't yet happening, though property registration data shows a fall in transactions.

“For instance, in Mumbai, registrations of residential units dropped 30 per cent in August this year to 4,500 units, against 6,200 in the same month last year. But that could also be due to the drop in sales of properties under construction, as there has been a definite drop in supply of new projects coming into the market.”

Edelweiss Housing, incorporated under the National Housing Bank (NHB), is a part of the Edelweiss Group, and was launched in the third quarter of the last year. With a loan book of approximately Rs 350 crore in the first half of the current year, it has extended its operations to Bangalore and Pune in the current quarter, to establish its presence in Mumbai, NCR region and Ahmedabad. It offers home loans, loans against property and lease rental discounting product.

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