Track2Realty: The overall mall vacancy levels across the top eight India cities remained stagnant at 14.47% in Q2 2014, which was recorded around 0.4 percentage points lower compared to Q1 2014. Amongst the top eight cities, Pune witnessed sharpest decline of 2.5 percentage points due to healthy leasing activity and no new mall supply. These are the findings of Cushman & Wakefield latest report.
Track2Realty: Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC has signed an exclusive agreement to develop the Sotheby’s International Realty brand in India with the opening of North India Sotheby’s International Realty.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The Indian real estate sector, often perceived as a sector with problems, is currently witnessing some sort of transformation. While the sector is now witnessing policy reforms, though at a slow pace, it is also witnessing increased professionalism in the way businesses are done in the country.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Statistics often only tell half the story and in real estate this old adage is all the more true as the figure are often not the facts and ground realities may juxtapose facts with figure. For instance, a perception is gaining ground that Mumbai property has reached beyond its saturation point and the standing inventory of 48 months is being cited as the evidence.
Track2Realty: According to recent CBRE report—How Global is the Business of Retail?—new trends identified in the global retail market saw retailers focusing on larger markets in 2013, with 83% of the survey cities witnessing at least one new entrant in the year (compared to 81% in 2012), while the top target markets saw a 28% rise in new entrants.
Track2Realty: The IT/ITeS sector continues to be a dominant growth driver for Bangalore, and some areas stand out from the rest as far as the impact of this sector is concerned. Whitefield in the eastern part of Bangalore is one such area. Whitefield was an early settlement in Bangalore and remained a quaint little suburb till the 2000s, when Bangalore’s IT boom reshaped Whitefield into a major suburb.
Track2Realty: The Grade A commercial office market in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) attracted an increase in demand for office space, with rental values rising across select established micro-markets during the quarter ended June 2014.
Track2Realty: Pune’s Grade A commercial office real estate market has been increasingly attracting the attention of major office space occupiers as a second option to Mumbai, because of its freshly available quality space options, comparatively affordable rental rates, as well as its proximity and excellent connectivity with India’s financial capital.
Track2Realty: With the coming of the new government already having improved sentiments in the realty market, as a next step the sector expects India’s economic fundamentals to be tackled on a priority basis before any major changes may be anticipated at an industry-level. Infrastructure projects need to be implemented with a sense of urgency, and more income tax incentives for home loans have to be introduced before we can expect to see any significant impact on the real estate sector.
Track2Realty: The biggest announcement for the real estate sector proposed by the newly elected Government in its Union Budget 2014–15 was the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) being directed to introduce Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts in India.