2008/10/25 Aadisht Khanna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: We must be living in different Indias. My experiences:
> house prices to collapse as they surely must. Nobody is getting > telemarketing calls for overdrafts or credit cards anymore. I'm being pestered with calls for Barclays, ICICI and Amex cards everyday. In addition, there are salespeople _walking in_ to my office offering to sign up the entire lot of us with offers like no annual fees and so on. No one's called me for an overdraft yet, but I get calls as well for personal loans, which are entirely unsecured. > The only thing > preventing telemarketing calls for checking accounts (which banks are now > desperate for) is regulation which says you only bank employees can solicit > deposit accounts - it can't be outsourced. We get solicited for savings - not checking - accounts every week. Most of these seem to be bank employees, but there are outsourced DSAs (Direct Sales Agents) who come to sell us salary transfer accounts. But I agree that people are waiting for housing prices to crash. Builders seem to be holding on to prices in a vain hope that someone will wave a magic wand and everyone will go back to paying ridiculous amounts per square foot - Delhi and surrounding areas are the seventh most expensive in the world for real estate. The Economic Times reported last week that bankers are putting the squeeze on builders to lower prices and get rid of inventory so that they can repay working capital loans - they are getting worried about those loans being backed by assets that may depreciate dramatically soon. Ram
