Track2Realty Exclusive: It has often been argued that Indian realty needs to adopt best practices and improve brand image as the sector defends its rough ride on the learning curves. If adopting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), retaining employees, inculcating brand loyalty and earning buyers’ trust are some of the best practices that can address the perception issues of Indian real estate, then the sector has to walk a long road ahead.
Track2Realty: A report in 2013 labelled Mumbai as the 16th most expensive city globally in terms of owning a residential space. The southern region of the island city is seen as the most prime, with locations such as Colaba, Cuffe Parade and Malabar hills topping the price charts. Owning a home in these and similar location of other cities can cost a buyer more than he or she would earn in two lifetimes.
Track2Realty Exclusive: All major cities are crowded beyond their limits and most are replete with problems like traffic, pollution, housing problems, lack of space, not to mention the ever-rising cost of living. Industry experts believe that integrated townships are the best solution proposed to counter the problem of crowded cities.
Track2Realty: Real estate is a business that requires regular funding, be it at the acquisition or execution stage. To raise funds, developers in India opt for modes like joint venture, pre-sale and construction finance. Construction finance can work out cheaper but is difficult to obtain because of the strict guidelines laid down by the Reserve Bank of India.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Highly speculative markets are always highly susceptible to speculation as such markets are mostly sentiment driven. These are the markets where investors are by and large the project riders and hence the movements in the power corridors do affect the market to a great extent. Coimbatore real estate, on the contrary, is a market which has traditionally been neither susceptible to speculation nor the investors have been on prowl.
Track2Realty: The reduced apartment sizes in new launches in 2014 have contributed to making prices more affordable. In the over 50,000 mid segment units (1 and 2 BHKs) of newly launched houses across top eight cities in Quarter 1 of 2014, most cities have seen a reduction in sizes of approximately 100 sf. This has led to an average drop of 6 percent in cost of the apartments within these cities, says a report by Cushman & Wakefield.
Track2Realty Exclusive: When Ajit Bundelkar, a stock market adviser, was suggested by the property broker to invest in a property beyond Thane market he was taken by surprise. Thane itself has just started shaping up and someone was suggesting to look not within but beyond. However, for him it was the same trusted broker on whose advice he had invested in a Thane apartment when he moved from Surat to Mumbai in 2009.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Only some years ago, when the National Housing Board brought out a survey report saying that India will need at least 26 million houses by the end of 2020, that the idea of privately built township or townships built on PPP model first germinated. Large tracts of land which were lying at the outskirts of cities were looked at with a lot of hope and dreams to offer better living to Indians at affordable prices.
Track2Realty: Maharashtra Government will soon come out with cluster development policy. This was announced on Friday, June 27, by Sachin Ahir, Minister of State for Housing, Slum Improvement, Housing Repairs and Reconstruction, Urban Land Ceiling, Industries, Mines, Transport, Environment and Parliamentary Affairs. He was speaking at the real estate conclave organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Mumbai.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Coming out of the shadow of Gurgaon-Manesar the once sleepy town in Bhiwadi is fast shedding the tag of affordable destination. What was initially conceptualised as an affordable residential market for those who could not afford high property prices in Gurgaon and for the industries that could settle in a moderately priced market has shaped up so very well that Bhiwadi today has emerged as a case study in how even the extension of a satellite town should be positioned.