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 expanding retail footprint of global brands in India has been a major growth driver of retail real estate in the country. In an effort to map and analyze the spread of international retailers, CBRE undertook a research study of more than 300 prominent global retailers—Expanding Horizons of Global Retailers in India—to identify operating trends, expansion strategies, and extent of penetration across leading cities.
Track2Realty: Describing Union Finance Minister’s Arun Jaitley’s maiden budget as “half glass full” and half filled with hopes, realtors’ apex body CREDAI Chairman Lalit Kumar Jain said it met with some expectations and left some out.
Track2Realty: The alarm on a tough upcoming budget was sounded when the newly elected Prime Minister said that “time has come to take tough decisions in the interest of the nation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking all due measures towards his vision of a ‘Shresht Bharat’, amidst some calibrated tough measures.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The Government of India has been re-evaluating policy measures and modifying these or initiating fresh mandates in order to give a boost to the industry. Changes in policies pertaining to SEZs towards reducing area requirements, the easing of norms for external commercial borrowing (ECB) for development of affordable housing and the augmentation of limits for listed NCDs will go a long way in clearing bottlenecks faced by the sector.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The real estate sector in India today is developing at a scorching pace. Factors such as higher levels of income and purchasing power and the growing need for entertainment, leisure and shopping, the government’s focus on infrastructure development, rapid urbanisation driven by rural-urban immigration and an emerging trend of nuclear families, greater availability of loans to finance real estate purchases, amongst others, have been instrumental in this development.
Track2Realty Exclusive: With a vision to make India a housing surplus nation from being the housing shortage country, CREDAI has been campaigning to make the business environment congenial for growth. But the realty bill, in its current form and shape, stifles the honest developer and scares away new entrepreneurs from entering the sector.
Track2Realty: During 1Q 2014, commercial leasing in eight major cities recorded at around 8 MN SF including 1.7 million sq ft pre commitment from large corporates for future expansion. Cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon and Kolkata witnessed increase absorption on qoq basis. Bangalore and NCR topped the chart contributing 75% in the total absorption. Bengaluru witnessed the highest absorption to the tune of 3.8 million sq ft followed by 2.3 million sq ft in NCR. IT/ITeS topped the charts and remained the primary demand driver IT/ITeS followed by Engineering and BFSI sectors.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Elections are part of a vibrant democracy. And like everyone else who is part of this democratic system, the developer community also pins hope on the upcoming elections. We are, in fact, watching all development with bated breath. We will keenly follow the five Assembly elections to be followed by the general elections of 2014 without any bias and in a totally unattached manner with no political affiliations whatsoever.
Track2Realty: Office space demand slowed down in the first quarter of 2014, with around 6.3 million sq. ft. of office space getting absorbed across the leading cities of the country as against 6.6 million sq. ft. in Q1 2013—a drop of approximately 5%. Transaction activity was dominated by the National Capital Region (NCR), Bangalore and Chennai—representing about 70% of the total space transacted during the quarter.