Monthly Archives: August 2009

Real estate demand revitalizes

Real estate
The global economic slowdown has provided end users a unique opportunity to buy their sweet homes as prices in many areas in National Capital Region have fallen steeply. Apartments are now available in some markets at almost 50 percent of the prevailing price a couple of years ago. The average price in Gurgaon has fallen by almost thirty percent and in Noida by more than fifteen percent in last two year.
According to PropEquity, Noida and Faridabad demonstrated high absorption primarily due to launch of affordable housing projects. The projects of Jaypee in Noida and BPTP in Faridabad were primarily driving the high absorption values in these cities with these developers commanding more than seventy percent of the market share for the period of Jan-Jun ’09. Noida maintained its top position in NCR with the launch of 7,032 units, and beats Gurgaon by a large margin of over 2,300 units.
However, the slowdown had its effect on the timely delivery of apartments. Unavailability of finances and lack of demand have forced developers to go slow in implementing projects, which were launched earlier. According to the report, amongst the cities witnessing the maximum number of delays in project completion, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon had 71 percent of the projects under implementation falling behind schedule.

Piramal Sunteck buys two Cidco plots

Real estate
Piramal Sunteck Realty purchased two plots in Navi Mumbai for more than thirty-one crore rupees. In all five plots, measuring around eleven thousand square meter were put on the block by the City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) for a total cost of eighty crore rupees.
Piramal Sunteck had put in a bid for all five plots. The bids for the other three plots were bagged by Millennium Enterprise, Atul Aggarwal & Sons and Prajapati Constructions. It is learnt that the Piramal-Sunteck group plans to develop its two plots for residential and commercial purposes. Residential development will account for 75%.
Cidco had invited bids for these plots around one month back. These plots are located in Airoli with a size ranging from fifteen hundred square meters to thirty-five hundred square meters. The successful completion of these bids comes not too long after the bid for Finlay Mill was scrapped. NTC is learnt to be looking for higher valuations as compared to the bid for Rs 710 crore by Lodha Developers.

Green buildings in demand

Green building
New trend of real estate industry is the green building concept. Such green buildings are environment friendly and energy efficient. A green building uses less energy, water and natural resources, creates less waste and is healthier for the people compared to a standard building.   According to Mr. Ajay Mathur, Director General for Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Ministry of Power, “India has close to thirty million square feet of green buildings; an amazing achievement given the fact that we had only about twenty thousand square feet in 2003 when the movement started here”.
Green buildings are wooing more and more buyers. These are in existence from last two years and now various Government organizations are spreading awareness and popularizing its energy efficiency feature.

Real estate is back on track

Real estate
According to CREDAI, real estate sector is picking up in both residential and commercial sector. Both real estate sectors are getting more and more enquiries. Along with enquiries, demand in both sectors has also increased. However, there are various major and minor factors behind this, but two major factors are, affordable housing concept and reduction in home loan rates. Investors have more choice and offer these days.

Mr. Raj Menda, President of CREDAI-Karnatak announced a 2 day realty expo starting from 15th of this month. This realty expo will showcase 150 properties. During this announcement Mr. Menda said that there is a growth of 60% in March of this year as compared to December last year.

Realty regulator is needed

propertywala
HDFC chairman Mr. Deepak Parekh said that there is need of real estate regulator at state level to deal with issues concerning the housing sector. He pointed out that the Government should layout an institutional framework for a real estate regulator. Regulators’ role would be to regulate the affordable housing agenda, promote real estate reforms and ensure transparency especially by mandating that flats be sold only on carpet area and act as a platform to protect buyers from real estate deceit. Mr. Parekh suggested that affordable housing has to be enable to cut all income segments and has to make economic sense in terms of distance from work place.

Let us find some positive aspects of recession

Real estate
Everybody is cursing recession as it resulted into slowdown in market. But, have you ever realized that there is always some positive aspect behind every off-putting phase. Recession has changed the point of views of consumers, lenders and developers as well. Consumers became more cautious during spending their saved money. On the other hand developers shifted their focus towards low cost housing.
Recession has made tremendous changes in real estate, various real estate giants showed interest in housing for middle class people rather than building a huge complex. Investors may seem to be winners with recession giving them an opportunity to pick investments at more realistic prices.

Puravankara buys sixty-two acres in Bangalore

Real Estate
Propertywala
Provident Housing is a fully-owned subsidiary of the Bangalore-based Puravankara Group. Provident housing is learnt to have bought a 62-acre land parcel in the outskirts of Bangalore. The deal is believed to have been struck for a value of 150 crore rupees. The deal between Provident Housing and the seller, who is an individual, was signed earlier this month.

The land parcel is located on the Mysore road around half-an-hour away from the heart of Bangalore. This is said to be an outright purchase with Provident Housing, scheduled to make the payment in two tranches. In the first stage, the buyer has paid a nominal token amount at the time of signing the agreement and the balance would be paid when the project is completed.

Recently, many real estate developers have been exploring opportunities in the affordable housing sector. The Puravankara Group will have these projects in Chennai and Bangalore and is negotiating deals in Hyderabad and Coimbatore. It is learnt that deals in Hyderabad and Coimbatore will be finalized in a month.