Mumbai estate agent blinded after acid attack
In a gruesome incident, real estate agent Dudhnath Verma has been blinded after an acid attack in suburban Mumbai. The incident happened on Monday, June 18.
In a gruesome incident, real estate agent Dudhnath Verma has been blinded after an acid attack in suburban Mumbai. The incident happened on Monday, June 18.
Indian real estate companies, which borrowed heavily during the peak of the economic cycle and rosy business forecast, are now caught in the vortex of piling debt post-slowdown. Most of the realtors who went on a land bank acquisition with borrowed money are struggling to repay even the interest and banks look reluctant to restructure the debt any more.
Jones Lang LaSalle’s markets experts have shared their expectations for the office leasing markets in Asia Pacific in the second quarter of 2012. In those markets that were experiencing office rental declines in previous quarters, the Markets teams are anticipating a slowdown in the rate of decline, for example a three to four percent fall in Grade A office rents this quarter in Hong Kong compared to an actual 6.3 percent decline in the first quarter.
A study by 99acres.com,says the property prices for the Mumbai region has seen an escalation in prices if we compare per square feet prices(PSF) of Q1-12 over Q1-11. This clearly reflects that the overall sentiment of the sector has improved drastically.
A White Paper on black money tabled in Parliament on Monday, May 21, has named real estate among others as most vulnerable to menace of black money. Given that land is part of the top black money generators, the white paper suggested that states could consider taxing farm income to curb black money.
There is a clear disconnect between what home buyers want and what they get. And it is here that the home buyers are ready to pay more to get what they see to believe. While the frequency of launching new residential projects have declined in the last year or so, there is also sizeable inventory building up that is available for buyers who are willing to make that investment.
While buying a house majority of the Indians have now matured to pay for ready-to-move property than a castle in the air. No wonder, despite the high appreciation potential, the new launched projects have few takers and there is hardly any market for a pre-launch offer. Thanks to the poor delivery of the real estate developers, unmet commitments and execution risk involved, at least the end users are not interested in new launches anymore.
Many developers believe that slum redevelopment adds asset value appreciation to the existing properties in the vicinity. This is a primary concern when it comes to town planning and infrastructure development. They say when a slum is redeveloped; the infrastructural development of the area in and around it is bound to happen.
Experts in the urban policy and planning are of the view that since none of the traditional solutions have worked, it calls for fresh approach and out-of-the-box thinking to make India slum free. Pranay Vakil, Chairman of Knight Frank India outrightly blames the ambiguous policies coming in the way of slum redevelopment. He says there is no dearth of expression of interest and even some of the international players had recently tied-up with the Indian partners for the same. He urges the Government for consistency in policy guidelines if slum free cities have to be a realty reality.
If you look the FDI side of the story over the years, initially there was an influx of a lot of foreign funds and in 2007, it was driven by the US. But the 3-4 years that investors have been here, we have seen a lot of selling. So a lot of investors withdrew or reduced their portfolio and even though being a fund, we found ourselves putting our hands into the acquisitions, marketing etc. It was not our comfort zone and we have been playing the role of a developer instead.