It is single women and not the married ones who are the real demand drivers of the housing market in India. Contrary to the general perception that marriage is a catalyst for women to look up to house ownership, it is the single women across the cities of India that are more attracted to the property. The choices of single women are as much goaded by the safety of their own roof over head as with the investment horizon.
It is in this backdrop that in a typical “Ravi Sinha Uncensored” tone I told a PR girl who called me for one such Press Release by one of the largest developers of Mumbai, “Listen! As a matter of principle I am not carrying any story on food distribution to construction workers. But wait! Please give my feedback to your client, “He or any other builder is not doing any charity; not worth beating its own trumpet. This is a national calamity and you are morally bound to do so. Such Press Releases only make you look really petty. You can weave this info into some other story once the dust settles and everything is normal. But glorifying humanitarian gesture at this point of time is at best Corona Tourism for Publicity which is highly deplorable.”
According to the World Bank, India ranks at 63rd among 190 countries, and the ranking is anticipated to improve further in the coming years backed by progressive government policies. Meanwhile, the real estate sector has shown remarkable resilience despite the bearish phase of the economy. Below is a lowdown of how the real estate story unfolded in 2019:
Track2Realty picks up Investment Magnet Cities of India through a comprehensive pan-India survey. The idea is to identify the top real estate destinations for the home buyers in the country.
These are the findings of a pan-India survey by Track2Realty. The survey was aimed at assessing the track record of the Indian malls in terms of meeting the customer experiences and rating & ranking the best malls in the country. The survey was carried in 20 cities – Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Bhopal, Raipur, Lucknow, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi and Coimbatore.
CapitaLand’s developments underway in India include 17.9 million sq ft of business park space in Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Pune when completed. Another 7.2 million sq ft through forward purchases have been signed up and are under construction. This includes IT parks in Mumbai and Hyderabad, a seventh warehouse at Arshiya Free Trade Warehousing Zone, Panvel, near Navi Mumbai, and BlueRidge 3, an IT/ITES Special Economic Zone development in Hinjewadi Phase 1 in Pune. CapitaLand is also building up a logistics asset portfolio in India with 4.3 million sq ft planned for development.
Sensing the potential of the student housing market, many start-ups have entered the fray. Student housing providers such as Oxfordcaps, Tribestays, PLACIO, Stanza Living, Campus Student Communities, Housr, Simplyguest, etc. currently operate in Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru, Noida, Mumbai, Indore, Dehradun, Ahmedabad and Jaipur. The top 10 players in the organized student housing space collectively operating slightly over 75,000 beds with plans to touch nearly 2 lakh beds by 2020.
The CP story is very old, one that spans about 50 years or more. It was NCR’s central business district (CBD). It is still probably the CBD. But office space in CP is stagnated. The new business districts such as Cybercity, GCR, Aerocity and GCE are growing at a rapid pace, meeting an enormous demand for commercial office space. Now, it’s a tale of two cities- Delhi and Gurgaon.
Can Indian real estate bridge the gap between the promise and the performance? Can Indian residential market attract as much investment as its commercial real estate? Will the global funds trust the Indian residential real estate? There are more questions than ever and it is time to settle these question marks over the business of real estate.
Once completed, Jewar International Airport will not only ease traffic at Delhi’s IGI Airport but also create multiple job opportunities and give decent impetus to the property market in Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway. These markets have been reeling under tremendous pressure over the last three to four years, and require a fresh injection of opportunity and intent to overcome this slump.