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: 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 Exclusive: Property analysts across the country refer Coimbatore as a market where the effects of slowdown is least visible. At a time when the other property markets across the country are reeling under slackening demand among other major worries, Coimbatore is proving to be a market where the property transactions are happening at a decent pace.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Prayag Damodar returned to the home town Ahmedabad after having spent 14 long years in the Gulf region where the only option of living has been high rises and skyscrapers. He had developed the liking for such vertical living so much that he had a feeling of missing that sky high living back home as the prevailing housing culture has been standalone residential units when he left 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: Cities come into existence either by design or by default and the first movers (either the local urban bodies or the private developers) give it a definite outlook & shape in terms of urban planning and overall outlook of the given city. This has been the pattern of urbanisation and rise and growth of the cities across the world with Indian being no exception.
Track2Realty Exclusive: While the real estate market in the metro cities have been flirting around with the NRIs to woo them with big-ticket investments, the discerning expat Indians had some other ideas. The destination to those desirable ideas was definitely not leading them to metro cities. So, at a time when the spate of luxury and super luxury launches were put on offer, the match makers of pricey dollars preferred to court the humble markets where the modest rupee was well grounded not to flaunt with pomp and show.
Track2Realty: With BJP controlling the Centre and the two biggest real estate markets in India – Mumbai and Gurgaon – the government has to focus on 3 I’s – Infrastructure, Interest reduction and Income generation. With the BJP’s remarkable show in Maharashtra, the state will give a new lease of life to its infrastructure projects across all sectors.
Track2Realty Exclusive: At a time when the buzz word across the country has been the inevitable reality of urbanisation and the need to create smart cities the urban planners are wondering which are the Indian cities that can claim to be close to the desired smart index. More importantly, which are the cities that have managed urban development along with the pace of business and economy to emerge as the truly developed cities with self sustaining physical and social infrastructure that could be a magnet for big ticket investment?