The concerns about soaring rentals and unaffordable housing in Mumbai notwithstanding, the surprising fact is that residential property prices across Mumbai city and its suburbs increased only by 7% in 2014, and by a negligible 0.3% in 2013.
Track2Realty: Satra Group has announced an initial investment of Rs 1000 crore towards developing real estate in Mumbai. Praful Satra, CMD of Satra Group says the expansion plan for the next 5 years includes developing of a total of 4 mn sqft, delivering more than 1,000 residential units of residential and commercial space.
Track2Realty: Mumbai, the financial capital of India, continued its office expansion and reflected occupiers’ confidence during the year 2014. Followed by 10% in Q3, the take-up figures of office space for this city grew at 29% q-o-q (absolute terms) from 1.1 million sq. ft in Q3 to 1.42 million sq ft in Q4 2014. The office rentals stayed steady during second half of the year and experts predict a similar spectacle over the next few quarters in 2015.
Track2Realty: Redevelopment is not a new phenomenon in Mumbai. Various parts of the city have being seeing redevelopment in pockets for many years as the city planning authorities strive to accelerate urban renewal and improve the quality of real estate and infrastructure, and developers strive to make a profit. The redevelopment process happens against a backdrop of the city’s fast-growing population and the rising demand for space amid limited availability of developable land.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Affordable housing has always been a wishful thought in Mumbai real estate and the call for the same has been reignited post the Government of India calling for a vision document to ensure houses for all by 2022. However, Mumbai is not like the rest of the country and the sky high land prices due to unavailability of developable and licensable land calls for a rethink over what precisely is feasible to create affordable housing stock in the city.
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).
Track2Realty Exclusive: The critics of Mumbai property market for long blamed it for getting saturated with no new avenue of growth. The peninsular city no doubt has a limitation as far as expanding its boundaries are concerned, yet Mumbai is increasingly challenging its geographical limitations. The expansion of the city, not just vertically but horizontally of late, is enough to silence the critics.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The home buyers’ have often been complaining about the lack of choice in the property market. It is not only the demand and supply gap that has been cribbed about, rather in the available segment also the available options have been few and far between.
Track2Realty Exclusive: To say that the home buyers are coming back to the Mumbai market during the festival season would be stating the obvious. The sentiments driven real estate purchase is already visible with the reported marginal price appreciation of residential real estate across the city. The reports of price appreciation do not just reflect the price trend of the city property market; it does indicate a much larger picture where the recovery of economy and sentiments are all driving the market simultaneously.
Track2Realty Exclusive: There are very few property markets across the country where the developments have been holistic. Some have grown as the residential zones, while others have developed as commercial zones. Even in commercial segment certain markets are known as retail markets while the rest of the markets have more office spaces. The locations close to the Central Business Districts (CBDs) get to see a few hospitality projects. Navi Mumbai, however, defies this growth pattern of the property market.