Track2Realty: Buyers remained cautious but searched well for aspirational homes. Developers remained restrained but projects reached completion stages as all segments of the market prepared for a growth phase in Indian property market, aligned to the political optimism in India.
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: Many developers are trying their best to create new zones and addresses across India that can appeal to HNI property buyers. This endeavour has met with varying degrees of success on the ground when it comes to swaying the ultra-rich clientele.
Track2Realty: “To give the much needed fillip to Real estate and infrastructure sector in India, ‘Renegotiation’ clause should be inculcated while awarding the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Projects to industry. This would help remove the major impediment to PPP projects, i.e the huge gap in the government’s mind set on one hand and the aggressive and ambitious strategies of the private sector on the other”,
Track2Realty Exclusive: There is no denying that the Union Budget 2014-15 has incentivised the eco system of the Indian real estate both for the developers as well as the buyers. Many of the announcements by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may not have any direct bearing on the fortunes of the real estate developers in this fiscal year, yet the symbolic sops are enough to silence the otherwise overtly critical sector for some time now.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The financial capital of India, Mumbai has always been reflective of the business confidence of the country. It is a market that shows the way forward for the investors in general and India Inc in particular, be it on the Sensex or the real estate market. It is hence assumed that if the confidence index in the city is low, it will have a percolating effect on the rest of the markets across the country.
Track2Realty: Expectations of an economic turnaround were belied with GDP growth slowing down to about 4.7% for FY 2013–14, marking it as the second straight year with below-5% growth.
Track2Realty: The global house price boom continued during the year to Q1 (first quarter) 2014, gathering pace. Despite strongly rising housing markets in Taiwan and the Philippines, the momentum seems to be passing momentarily from Asia, where interventionist authorities have slowed housing markets in Hong Kong, Singapore and China. Instead, action is shifting to the Pacific, the Gulf, and (less forcefully) to Europe, which are all seeing strong price rises.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Analysts have been wondering in the last couple of years that when the property market across the country had been witness to slowdown, how come Coimbatore market kept its momentum up with no visible signs of stress. As a matter of fact, the property prices in the city across the asset class noticed upward movement in the range of 10-15 per cent, thus bucking the trend of slowdown.
Track2Realty: Although the Interim Budget announcement supporting affordable housing was welcomed by the real estate industry, the segment has a long way ahead as yet. To begin with, there is considerable supply shortage in this arena—pegged at 18.78 million for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012–2017) by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Ministry (HUPA), of which 96% is in the EWS and LIG categories. Housing shortage for the EWS stands at almost 11 million homes, while that for LIG stands at 7.41 million homes.