India Property: The Overseas Buyer Boom from an Indian Perspective

The emergence of Information Technology, and the spiraling amounts charged by the few westerners who command in depth knowledge in the field, led to massive growth in the use of Indian IT workers around the world.

Whether you are in any of the European countries or in the United States, you are quite likely to bump into Indians; they form the mettle of many blue chip companies.

As the number of Indians working abroad increased there was a sudden surge in property prices across India. But even as this surge took place, the growth in prices for Indian's still left prices comparatively low when looked at by Western standards.

The so called 'NRIs' (or Non-Residential Indians), who were majorly based in the United States or the United Kingdom started investing in Indian property; the currency of both nations being extremely strong compared to their Indian counterpart. They quickly found that even the highest end luxury properties in India, could be bought for a fraction of what they would pay back home.

During this overseas-buyer fuelled boom property prices increased by a factor of 10 in some cities, unfortunately this quickly started to put property out of the reach of India's growing middle class.

Overall, the boom's effect on India's development was largely positive: the number of constructions in India increased and people who could no longer afford their dream home in cities started moving to the suburbs. The concept of moving to the suburbs was not widely accepted to begin with, but as it was realized they had little other choice, many of India's middle class citizens began moving to the suburbs, which then also begun to develop at a rapid pace.

Thank to such developments, suburban India is a far better place to live in than it was a few years ago. Ironically though, this now makes the suburbs attractive to foreign investors, and the risk exists that soon suburban property will be out of reach for Indian citizens.