Mutual Funds Vs Real Estate – Which is better for Investing

in India? (2019 Follow up post)

stableinvestor.com/2019/06/mutual-funds-vs-real-estate-better-investing-india.html

Dev Ashish June 24,

2019

Note – This is a guest post by Ajay. He has previously written on this topic here. Since a few years
had passed, he was kind enough to share his views again (with a useful real-life example). Ajay
has also authored other interest posts here like How He created a corpus of Rs 3.7 Crore in
just 10 years. So over to Ajay for this post…

______

A few years back, I had written on a controversial topic – Investing in Mutual Funds Vs
Real Estate in India. I wanted to do a follow-up post on the topic as with each passing year,
a new set of people begin asking the same questions:

Are mutual funds better than real estate for investing in India?
Can investing in real estate be better than investing in equity funds?
Mutual Funds Vs Real Estate – which is better
And similar versions asking the same things…

So let me try and address this again…

I once again reiterate that there will be many reasons for investing (or let’s say putting
money) in real estate – such as peer pressure, family pressure, social status etc. and I am
not debating the same. This question of whether you should invest in Real Estate (for
investment) or Mutual Funds, can only be answered by you and you alone.

And therefore, this article should ideally be read in that spirit.

The intention of this post is to present facts based on the actual data, from both real estate
and mutual funds from an investor’s perspective and ofcourse, my opinion on the same.

Also, as stated in the earlier post:

A home is a place to live and it should not be linked to one’s investment strategy.
There should not be any second thought about buying your 1st property for self-
occupancy whether with or without tax benefits.
I am aware and acknowledge the fact that being Equity and Equity Funds oriented
investor, my views will tend to be biased towards Equity investments than Real
Estate investments.
The experience and the actual investment returns of Real Estate investors vary from
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 location to location. And therefore, many of you may not agree with the conclusion
or findings of this post. Nevertheless, through this article, I have analyzed the actual
data from the Real estate and mutual fund investments in India.

So let’s go ahead…

Real Estate Investment

In August-2010, a friend of mine decided to buy a 1200 Square feet (Sq.ft). Flat in the
outskirts of Bangalore (@ Rs 2290 per Sq.ft.) through a housing loan. The details are as
follows:

Cost of Flat (including Car parking, Utilities, Legal costs, Deposits etc.): Rs 31,39,500
VAT, Registration & Stamp paper: Rs 3,02,566

Total Cost of Flat (all Inclusive): Rs 34,42,066

To fund this purchase, he used:

His own money (Rs 12,42,066) and

Took a home loan for Rs 22,00,000 from a bank.

The loan EMI was Rs.21,343.

As like many of you committed individuals, he paid all the loan EMI on or before the due
dates, and also increased the EMI amounts as his salary increased during the loan
tenure. He also made part payments many times to accelerate the loan closure and to
settle the loan as early as possible. He also put this house on monthly rental as he had to
live in another city for professional reasons.

Kind of an ideal way of managing a home loan you can say.

Now let’s look at the numbers below (if you are interested in the actual loan cashflow data):

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Now the loan ended recently (in May-2019).

So I sat with my friend and re-calculated the actual cost of his flat:

Total Cost (Flat in Hand) – Rs 34.4 lac

Downpayment – Rs 12.42 lac

Loan – Rs 22.00 lac

Total EMI Paid – Rs 25.73 lac

Total Initial Downpayment & Prepayments – Rs 18.67 lac

Actual Cost of Flat (excl. rent)- Rs 44.40 lac

Rent Received – Rs 11.36 lac

Net Amount Paid for Flat – Rs 33.04 lac

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These are real numbers. Real actual numbers.

Let’s move further.

With the loan completed in almost 9 years time, and with the general assumption of
property appreciation, we expected the property to fetch at least double the investment
(value) of net amount paid for the flat.

So we expected Rs 66 lac from the sale of the property.

However, we did not find a single buyer even at Rs 55 lac!!

From the local brokers and available market information, we got to know that the property
could be sold immediately for Rs 40 to 42 lac and if we were lucky, it can be sold for a
stretched value of Rs 45-48 lac (let’s say max Rs 50 lac). Also, there will be capital gains tax
on the profit amount.

While it is concerning that there was no value appreciation despite the area is connected
and having all the basic amenities in the near vicinity, I decided to take this as a case study
to see an alternative scenario – where investments had been made in Mutual Funds. I
wanted to know what would have been the outcome.

Mutual Fund Investment

I chose 3 funds to feed the investment data in MF (same amount invested as EMI,
downpayment and prepayment on the same date as the loan payments were made).

The choice of funds were as follows:

1 decent performing fund (Franklin India Equity),

1 market performer (UTI Nifty 50 Index Fund), and
1 worst performing fund (LIC Multi-Cap Fund)

Since the direct plans weren’t available in 2010, regular plan (i.e. ones with higher fee and
lower returns) were chosen for data crunching. So here are the details below (or you can
skip and go straight to the summary just after the table):

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Summary of the above investment table is as follows:

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Conclusion:
From the table above, it is clearly evident that if instead of buying the flat, the investment
was rather made in the worst performing mutual fund, it would still have given returns of Rs
55.5 lac against Rs 40-48 lac current market value of the flat.

Investment in the index fund would have fetched a much better Rs 67.94 lac. And if you
luckily had invested in a very good fund, then it would have given you about Rs 78+ lac.

Not bad. Right?

I know what many of you might be thinking…

While we can debate the time of entry in mutual funds, time of entry or locality or high cost
paid for the property etc., I still find merit in investing in Mutual Funds instead of Real Estate
flats as an investment. And I very well know that irrespective of the above data favouring
MFs, many will still argue in favour of the real estate. I leave the decision to you.

An important point that shouldn’t be missed in this Mutual fund vs real estate debate is the
importance of selecting a good fund (or avoiding bad ones) for investment. And if we
stretch this topic a little, it opens up another separate debate on the Active versus Passive
Funds which I guess is best left for another post.

Note: In the calculation of Real Estate, the cost for Home Insurance, Home Maintenance, etc. was
not included. Also, the Rs 2 Lac tax savings during this tenure was not considered as there will be
a capital gain tax on property investment too. Equity investment until March-2018 were are
tax-free and therefore, the tax implication would be negligible in case of equity investment in the
above case study’s tenure.

Concluding Thoughts
As stated in the previous post on the debate of real estate vs mutual funds, I once again
have the same concluding thoughts.

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And this is a repetition of the earlier statement. One should not give any second thought
about buying the 1st house/property for self-occupancy, whether it is with or without tax
benefits.

However, based on the comparative analysis done above, one should think twice (or even
ten times…) before buying a home for investment purpose. One should carefully weigh all
the available data (Or as much reliable information you have) and then take a wise call.

Just because your friend or family members are investing in real estate does not mean that
you should also do it.

Diversification aspect should also be looked at. But you should not avoid evaluating your
own financial goals. This is extremely critical. And don’t just evaluate and feel helpless
about it. Find out how you can plan to achieve them and then decide whether you actually
need (or want) to ‘invest’ in real estate or not. Different people will get different answers.

Without doubt, a physical asset (like a house) will always give huge mental comfort and
satisfaction over other financial assets like mutual funds. But it is also true that it may not
always be the best available investment option. In fact, investing in house funded through
a loan, is a huge long-term liability – which in many cases, chokes the person’s ability to
save and invest for other goals in right instruments.

In my opinion (and it is mine so you can choose to ignore it), after the purchase of the 1 st
property for self-use, if there is any surplus cash left to invest, you should invest it as per
your asset allocation (which includes debt, equity, gold & real estate). If the asset allocation
permits you to invest in real estate, you may very well do it. But if it doesn’t, then you should
refrain from investing in it just because it’s what everyone else around you is doing.

As stated at the beginning of this article too, this is one hell of a controversial debate.

And there is no one straight-forward or logical answer to it. There are no thumb rules
either. You and you alone can answer the question of Real Estate Vs Mutual Funds .

In this article (and in the earlier one), all I have tried is to attempt to clear the myth that
“Real estate investing is the only best Investment Option” available for everyone. As you might
have noticed (if you have spent some time reading the tables above), that all calculations
have been done by estimating the returns net of expenses. We just cannot ignore expenses
like those many who just tell you the number of times their property has appreciated in
value. It’s not correct.

Hope you found this analysis interesting and useful.

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