Track2Realty Exclusive: It has indeed been a busy year and 2014 can well be described as the year of roller coaster emotions where the business confidence index was exposed to two extreme ends of swing. In an otherwise flat year, the real estate sector may not have been witness to transactions on ground but the poetic engagement has definitely been at the emotional level.
Track2Realty: Among the various regulations adopted in real estate development, Floor Area Ratio (FAR) is one of the most critical ones because it decides the intensity of development which is permitted in a certain area. Recently, the fact that the urban development ministry raised the FAR for residential areas in Delhi to 200% made headlines news because this will lead to a significant increase in built-up areas in many parts of the city, thereby infusing critically needed residential supply.
Track2Realty: After a better than expected growth of 5.7% during the April–June quarter, India’s GDP growth slowed down to 5.3% during July–September, mainly due to sluggishness in manufacturing growth and a slowdown in agricultural output.
Track2Realty Exclusive: If consistent rental market is a tool to analyse the true growth potential of the given property market, then Pune is probably the most resilient market. Rental index is often used to assess the demand and supply indicators as and when there is an affordability issue borne out of macro-economic indicators.
Track2Realty: Sentiment around Indian real estate among both domestic and international investors has improved in recent times, following the election of a new government and also on account of an upturn in consumer demand, says theEmerging Trends in Real Estate® Asia Pacific 2015 report, published jointly by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Track2Realty Exclusive: FICCI has recently released Real Estate Sentiment Index for Q3-2014. The report is also supported by sensitive data being put forth by one of the world’s leading independent real estate consultancy, Knight Frank. The index or a very formal survey conducted by the joint efforts of these two independent organizations revealed a lot about Indian realty market.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The increasing shift of corporate focus towards Noida has been a matter of both research and speculation in the region. While the critics would like to point out that the shift of the Indian business community and the Multi National Companies (MNCs) have been more due to recent economic slowdown that made the scale of economy unviable in the high rental destinations like Gurgaon, the optimists within the built environment would prefer to look at the traction points of the city.
Track2Realty-Agencies: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has ordered an Income Tax department investigation against a number of real estate developers who were recently shown by an investigative portal to be willing to accept alleged black money in property transactions.
Track2Realty: Earlier in October, the US National Association of Realtors published a report which stated that buyers from India purchased residential properties in the US estimated at $5.8 billion in value during the one-year period ending March 2014.
Track2Realty: The completion of several large transactions—including a couple of deals worth overUS$ 500 million each—pushed up the total real estate investment volume in the Asia Pacific region in the June–September period to US$ 35 billion, a quarter-on-quarter increase of about 40% (as per the CBRE APAC Capital Markets MarketView Q3 2014 report).