Track2Realty Exclusive: Real estate gains are not always short-term but often long-term from investment point of view. The same can be said about 2013 where despite of an outside view dismissing the year 2013 for low sales velocity, piling inventory, liquidity crunch and policy ambiguity, added to the country moving to the General Elections in 2014, the sector has managed to pave the way for long term reforms.
Track2Realty: There are still significant investment opportunities left in India’s real estate market. For investors looking at cost-effective projects to park their funds, this might be a right time as weak market sentiments are likely to lead to weak valuations, providing windows for investing in quality projects.
Track2Realty Exclusive: When a developer few years back launched a 5 acre project in Coimbatore dedicated to the senior living, it raised quite many eye brows. Everyone was wondering whether there is a market for such a project, exclusively conceptualised for the senior citizens. Critics even had it that the project is ahead of its time and some termed it as a project meant for parking the investment.
Track2Realty: India’s hospitality real estate space has probably come of age; and has reached a critical threshold in its learning as well as business development curves. Although the ongoing economic slowdown and uncertainty have caused hotel rates to decrease marginally in the last couple of years, India now stands at the cusp of a hotel building and rebranding boom, which should help keep rates competitive in 2013.
Track2Realty: Emerging markets are offering interesting investment opportunities in terms of shopping center development, according to the latest Asia Pacific Retail Trends and Retail Hotspots reports released by CBRE. The Asia Pacific market in particular continued to see a steady flow of new retailer openings in 2013, amid steady economic growth and generally positive consumer sentiment.
Track2Realty Exclusive: When Prahlad Patel went on a property hunt in the city of Vadodara, the broker had a curious look at his face. Under the impression that Patel is one among the many NRIs looking to invest in the city property with the fall in the Indian currency he thought it is his duty to narrate how the property market is just ripe to enter for sizeable return.
Track2Realty: India is among the top ten global markets to recorded the highest rental increase year on year as per the annual report ‘Main Streets across the World 2013’ by Cushman & Wakefield. Punjagutta in Hyderabad, recorded the 8th highest growth in retail rental values globally with an annual growth of 29% year–on- year.
Track2Realty: The overall vacancy levels in malls declined by 0.6 percentage to 14.51% on account of consistent leasing activities while supply has been only 0.77 msf gets added in Kolkata and Pune, says a retail report by Cushman & Wakefield. Healthy transaction activity led to reduction in overall mall vacancy of Pune and Kolkata despite the addition of fresh mall space in both the cities.
Track2Realty: Office markets in India registered a downward trend in overall net absorption for the first three quarters of 2013, as per the latest report released by global real estate consultants, Cushman & Wakefield.
Track2Realty: The total new housing demand will be nearly 12 million units in the next five years (2013- 17), according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield (C&W). This is based on the estimated growth of population across India and in major cities. Of the pan India additional demand, the top 8 cities will constitute approximately 23%.