Mumbai is the financial capital of the country. While it is still a far cry from being comparable to Shanghai in terms of aesthetics and infrastructure, the fact remains that most large corporations and financial institutions have their presence in this city.
With the return of confidence in the sector, Indian real estate players are now once again looking at private equity funding. That said, the industry still depends heavily on bank debt, NBFC funding and end-user advances. This is because bank debt is a cheaper option, and also because it offers flexible tenures.
Indian retail today stands at an inflexion point where the sector is poised to take a giant leap. Jones Lang LaSalle’s latest research offering ‘India Retail – Opportunities in a Revolution’ explores the potential in the Indian retail real estate in the coming years.
The greener pastures are mostly defined with numbers and not execution capabilities or business model. For example, the absorption of office space has been upwards of 40 million square feet per annum for the last 3 years. The overall sentiments in this segment look bullish with PE investors also putting in money. As a matter of fact, even in retail real estate the PE investors are bullish and exploring even the Tier II cities having malls with good footfalls, brand mix and strong sales. This is what is enticing the residential developers looking for both the buyers as well as the capital investments.
Track2Realty: NCR retail real estate market remained largely stable as per the latest retail report from real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield. A few locations in both main street as well as malls saw some appreciation in rental values. Connaught Place (Inner Circle) recorded an increase of 12% while prime malls across Delhi NCR saw a positively rising curve following robust demand for the same.
More than 30% of retail mall space against the projected supply for the first half of the year were deferred, says Cushman & Wakefield report on the retail real estate market. A fresh mall supply for H1 2012 stood at 2.27 million sq. ft. (msf). Approximately one million sq.ft. of expected mall supply was deferred to second half of the year or next year. The overall vacancy rate for the major cities as of H1 2012 stood at 19.6% marginally higher than the previous quarter.
The retail real estate market received a fresh mall supply of approximately 1.94 million sq. ft. (msf) in Q1 2012 (quarter ending March 2012). Many of the expected mall projects were differed on account of delay in construction, leading to a deficit of close to 50% from the estimated supply (3.37 msf) for the quarter, says Cushman & Wakefield in its latest report.
The success of the Embassy Parks REIT has given global investors strong reason to increase their stake in multiple commercial assets across the country so that these could be listed under REITs in the future. Some of these global institutional investors who are eyeing the country’s real estate market via REITs include Japan’s NikkoAm StraitsTrading Asia, US’ North Carolina Fund, Taiwan’s Eastspring Investments, Malaysia’s Hwang Asia Pacific REITs and Infrastructure Fund, and Canada-based Sentry Global.
Mostly as of now only the developers of integrated townships have got into the healthcare investment. The dilemma of whether or not to have healthcare facility in the project also comes with whether the developer should himself get into the operational side of running it or it should be outsourced post the investment.
Cushman & Wakefield has appointed Ritesh Sachdev as Managing Director,…