Real estate is where the moolah is

Mumbai: This year, the number of millionaires has grown by a million in the world. And within that India has the second fastest growing high net worth population.

And guess where the filthy rich tycoons are minting their big bucks from? Well, the moolah is coming mostly from real estate, says a report my Merril Lynch and Capegemini.

Some of the millionaires are said to have even liquidated other investments to fund property opportunities. In the Asia Pacific region alone, millionaires held about 29 percent of their assets in real estate, as against 16 percent in 2005.

The report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch says there has been a 20 percent rise last year in the number of High Net Worth Individuals in India – people worth over one million dollars.

They are also pumping in their money into what Capgemini and Merrill call Passion Investments. That includes art, jewellery and other collectibles. For instance in the past year in the passion investment category - they have put in 20 percent in art, 26 percent in luxury collectibles and 18 percent in jewellery.

The report says there were over 1 lakh of these Indian high-fliers in 2006. That makes India's millionaire growth rate the second fastest in the world, after Singapore, where the growth was 21 percent.

But it's not just India and Singapore. The population of millionaires in the world rose 8.3 percent last year, from 8.7 million in 2005 to 9.6 million. And that's not all. The wealth held by these guys is now 37.2 trillion dollars.

And what's the trend for this year? Merrill and Cap Gemini expect a slowdown in economic growth rates and therefore a fall in the growth of millionaires to 6.8 percent from 8.3 percent. So, being a millionaire this year might be tougher than it was last year.

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#India #millionaires #Merril Lynch #Real Estate