Investment banking sources and PE funds have confirmed that a number of such deals have been available in the market for the last few weeks. While there are only a few income-yielding and advance stage assets, which would be easier to sell, a majority of the assets will be at an early stage which would find very few takers or see a loss. "Around 15-20% of the deals in the market today are of this kind," says the investment banker.

Some of these institutions are highly leveraged and their mortgage related assets in the US are getting marked down. There is a need to liquidate some of the assets they bought with their proprietary capital to get cash and strengthen their balance sheet," says a source at an India-focused real estate fund. In the last one week, the fund has already received a few calls for large deals where some of the large institutions have invested from their proprietary books.

"The pressure to sell is also because many PE deals might have been sold down by these institutions as structured products and now those buyers want an exit given these buyers' potential exposure to sub-prime assets," says Jagdeep Pahwa, managing director, Infinite India Investment Management. "We have reviewed a few structured deals with proprietary investments of large institutions in the past three weeks," says Sunil Agarwal, chief development and acquisition officer at South Asian Real Estate.