Track2Realty Exclusive: When Ajit Bundelkar, a stock market adviser, was suggested by the property broker to invest in a property beyond Thane market he was taken by surprise. Thane itself has just started shaping up and someone was suggesting to look not within but beyond. However, for him it was the same trusted broker on whose advice he had invested in a Thane apartment when he moved from Surat to Mumbai in 2009.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Coming out of the shadow of Gurgaon-Manesar the once sleepy town in Bhiwadi is fast shedding the tag of affordable destination. What was initially conceptualised as an affordable residential market for those who could not afford high property prices in Gurgaon and for the industries that could settle in a moderately priced market has shaped up so very well that Bhiwadi today has emerged as a case study in how even the extension of a satellite town should be positioned.
Track2Realty: With the new government now firmly in charge of steering the country, the Indian economy is perched on the threshold of recovery and growth. The serious issues that have plagued the sector for so long may now be proactively addressed.
Track2Realty Exclusive: If SMEs presence is any indication of the scope of commercial property in the given region, Delhi-NCR’s east coast can easily claim to be a vibrant market for the commercial property. However, the tag of an affordable zone has till very recently been the reason why big ticket commercial investment did not fell into Ghaziabad, stretch of NH 24 or even Noida to a large extent.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Once known for cotton cultivation, Annur is fast changing its outlook as cotton cultivation has taken a back seat in the last over a decade due to high cultivation cost and uneconomical operation arising out of poor marketing infrastructure. The region nevertheless holds tremendous potential to emerge as one of the key real estate hotspots in time to come.
Track2Realty: In marked contrast to other cities, the dynamics of luxury housing in Mumbai have changed dramatically over the last decade. Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai continue to have location-specific premiums, which have risen consistently.
Track2Realty: In India’s competitive real estate market, luxury housing projects have been launched aplenty over the last couple of years. So much so that a conservative market like Chennai, for instance, is likely to witness about 1,500 units of ultra-luxury homes—budgeted between Rs. 5–20 crore—within the next 12 months.
Track2Realty: Expectations of an economic turnaround were belied with GDP growth slowing down to about 4.7% for FY 2013–14, marking it as the second straight year with below-5% growth.
Track2Realty: The global house price boom continued during the year to Q1 (first quarter) 2014, gathering pace. Despite strongly rising housing markets in Taiwan and the Philippines, the momentum seems to be passing momentarily from Asia, where interventionist authorities have slowed housing markets in Hong Kong, Singapore and China. Instead, action is shifting to the Pacific, the Gulf, and (less forcefully) to Europe, which are all seeing strong price rises.
Track2Realty: For the quarter ended March 2014, nearly US$800 million was invested into India’s real estate sector. This translates to almost Rs.4,800 crore having been injected into the sector through the private equity route over the past few months. This couldn’t have happened at a more opportune timefor a sector faced with a liquidity crunch, high land acquisition costs, and stringent due diligence from the banking sector—which continues to perceive real estate as a high-risk domain in India.