Track2Realty-Agencies: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has ordered an Income Tax department investigation against a number of real estate developers who were recently shown by an investigative portal to be willing to accept alleged black money in property transactions.
Track2Realty: Technically speaking, retirement home projects are developed keeping in mind certain age groups, and should ideally be designed with special facilities to make life more comfortable for senior citizens. However, the on-ground interpretation in India has for the longest time been that any project and location that fits a certain budget and requirements is potentially a suitable ‘retirement home’.
Track2Realty: Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ announcement of his intention to make Pune the IT capital of India has brought mixed reactions. However, this is not a Utopian dream but in fact becoming a reality even as we speak. Pune and information technology are already inseparable concepts today, and all it will take is a decisive push by the BJP government to establish it as the country’s foremost IT hub.
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: The Indian monsoon months are synonymous with low activity in real estate, but this year witnessed considerable amount of activity in the office sector. Compared with last year’s monsoon months of July, August and September (3Q CY 2013), this period in 2014 showed 58% growth in office space demand.
Track2Realty: India’s economic growth accelerated to 5.7 per cent in the April–June quarter, a figure that is much better than the 4.7 per cent in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year. According to various international agencies like International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asian Development Bank and Moody, 2014 is expected to record an economic growth of 5.2% to 5.6% in 2014.
Track2Realty: Net office uptake in the first three quarters (Jan – Sept) of 2014 has seen a significant rise of 36% as compared to same time last year. Total net absorption of office space has been recorded at approximately 24 million square feet (msf) between January – September in 2014 as against the 17.7 msf in same time in 2013, says Cushman & Wakefield in a report.
Track2Realty: Despite overall retailer demand remaining generally subdued for retail real estate space in the Asia Pacific region during the July–September period of the year (Q3 2014)—major global mass market fashion brands continued with steady space transactions in India and emerging markets of Southeast Asia.
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: 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.