REIT, Real Estate Funds, Equity and general hello after long time

Sorry friends - could not post for a long time. In the last few months lot have been done on following things for the benefit of investors:

1. Entry load made to nil for any investor who are directly investing into any equity fund. Remember - you have to either invest directly by submitting form to the fund house or by incremental investments through their websites only. Even if you do online investment through other sites like ICICI Direct etc, you'll still be charged entry load.

2. REIT framework is frozen and should be out for investors in next 2 months.

In the mean time I could get a chance to invest in a REIT like structure from Milestone. It's called IL&FS Milestone Realty fund. So far they are doing well in paying the yields (rental returns). I got two quarters worth of returns so far. They started with 11% pre-tax return and latest one I got was @12%. After 4 years when they will sell the properties, we'll get the capital appreciation also. Not a bad one!!

Another nice fund they are coming up with, which is called milestone domestic fund series 2. They are expecting IRR of 30% in that one. It's 4 years (with an option to increase by upto 2 years) fund with a minimum investment amount of 20 Lakhs. If anybody has such amount - this may be a good one to invest. This is also certified by RBI. For more information you can check out http://milestonecapital.in/. Unlike other development oriented real estate fund this one is only for 4 years (others range from 6 years and up) and minimum investment amount is lower (others go as high as 1 crore - though I have seen it coming down significantly to 25L level nowadays).

Another good investment avenue is equity market in general with 3-5 years horizon. After Sensex came down and settling at 17K level, it may be a good time to enter. CITI has target of 18500 in 9 months, others say 20K in 1-2 years - which are not bad - of course not as spectacular as last 3 years - but hey, things which go up that fast had to come down. But now things are more rational - so go ahead for equity for slightly longer term view (3-5 years).

More to come...