Year 2018 was a veritable roller-coaster ride for the Indian real estate. Despite signs of recovery across segments, the liquidity crunch – further exacerbated by the NBFC crisis – put all industry stakeholders on tenterhooks.
In India, when the going was smooth a number of leading developers tried to foray into multi-city operations. Most of them had to exit the expansion strategy sooner than later. It rather proved to be the first nail in the coffin for some of these market leaders by size.
The gross leasing activity in India was recorded at 36.4 million sq ft for the first nine months of 2018, up 26% YoY. Pan-India demand for Grade A office space was driven by the technology sector (48%) in Q3 2018, followed by banking and insurance representing 19% of the total leasing volume.
A staggering infrastructure finance deficit is threatening Asia’s growth and prosperity. By 2030, an estimated US$1.7 trillion per year (or total of US$20 trillion by 2030) in infrastructure investment will be needed in the region to keep pace with economic development, sustain population growth and urbanization and mitigate the effect of climate change.
The ancient Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’ certainly has a lot of pertinence to Indian real estate today. These are doubtlessly ‘interesting’ times for the sector, which has transformed significantly over the last decade. The pace of transformation has been accelerated further by the Central Government’s reformative steps aimed at ushering in ‘Acche Din’ to the realty sector.
The report also recommends the best urban locations for technology firms. Bengaluru, Singapore and Shenzhen stand out as top choices for starting or expanding technology operations in Asia. Modest long-run growth prospects hold down developed cities like Tokyo and Taipei for the sector. While emerging cities offer high growth potential and low operating costs, they tend to score lower on employment criteria and human aspirational metrics.
As per Colliers International, the overall absorption for H1 2018 now stands at ~ 24 million sq ft. Bengaluru (Bangalore) continued to account for the highest share of absorption at 34% in Q2, followed by the National Capital Region (NCR) at 28%, Mumbai at 14%, Hyderabad and Chennai at 8% each, Pune at 6%, and Kolkata at 2%.
It is generally accepted in the Indian market that rental yields in the country are often much lower than elsewhere in the world because relatively few people seek rented homes: 66 per cent of homes in Indian cities and 90 per cent of homes in rural areas are owner occupied.
MORE till date has invested capital in the real estate sector through three real estate funds and PMS/ Prop investments. Today, cumulative AUM under MORE stands at more than INR 2,100 crore spread across IREF (INR 200 crore), IREF II (INR 500 crore), IREF III (INR 1030 crore) and balance under PMS / Prop Investments.
If the CBD of a given city is losing its sheen, there can be only two diametrically opposite reasons – one, the economy of the city is collapsing and the other is that the city has created many new centers of economic activity.