The buzz word among realty consultants at the beginning of the year seems to be price correction. After the real estate firms like Jones Lang LaSalle India and Cushman & Wakefield forecast of a correction in real estate prices in 2011, now Crisil also forecasts a price correction, though in select pockets.
After Gurgaon One, western part of the city might see rise of another multi-storey building in the same vicinity. Jawala Mills, decades-old defunct textile mill on Old Delhi Road is slated to be sold by mid-February. The 17 acres of land was first purchased by IT major Aricent Technologies in early 2000s as tech firm wanted to re-develop the area into an office space. However, the new Master Plan of Gurgaon has marked the area as a residential zone. Following this, Aricent Technologies have decided to put the land up for sale.
Pune is virtually unrecognizable from the sleepy, laid-back city it was a few decades ago. There were no signs of any significant real estate action in the erstwhile Punyanagari before that. Today, however, Pune numbers in the Top Seven property hotspots within the country.
There has never been a real decline in the popularity of second homes in India. It certainly is a full-fledged real estate market segment in its own right. However, just as on the first home market, the demand for second homes is driven by the general economic climate. When the economy declines, all real estate segments decline with it. By the same coin, the demand for second homes always rises when people’s spending power increases.
Ramesh Nair, former Managing Director of Jones Lang LaSalle India’s Chennai and Hyderabad regions, has assumed overall responsibility for the company’s Western India operations. West India, which encompasses Mumbai and Pune.
8 out of every ten home buyers in the Indian cities are sulking with the unfair trade practices of the real estate developers. Only 20 per cent of the buyers said they received a defect-free home and timely possession. The low customer satisfaction index was as much evident with developers offering affordable housing as with luxury housing.
It is an established fact that scheduled infrastructure projects tend to increase the value of properties in the adjoining areas. This occurs because the infrastructure project becomes a part of USP for the developers or property owners. There have been instances where property prices have increased 50-70% from the announcement of an infrastructure initiative until the operational phase.
Demand for mid-segment residential units in Mumbai is far greater than available and future supply, therefore growth is expected in 2011. In the industrial sector, cities such as Ahmedabad, Vadodara and other port cities in Gujarat are seeing the highest growth.
India has been ranked as the most preferred real estate destination among the Asia Pacific region as foreign investors still consider the country to be extremely viable, according to a report released by ULI-PwC. “India, and particularly Mumbai and New Delhi, are ranked the foremost real estate market destinations as the residential properties have maintain the growth momentum, and foreign investors still consider this market to be extremely viable,” the report titled ‘Emerging trends in Real Estate in Asia Pacific 2011′, said.
Considering the amount of negative press they get, it is not immediately apparent that there are also less negative ways of looking at them. For instance, slums represent an extremely high-density model of residential settlement. In this respect, they make the most efficient use of limited land possible.