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 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.
Track2Realty-Agencies: India’s largest realty company DLF said on Saturday, Nov 15, it plans to launch the Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) next fiscal to monetise its commercial assets and is in talks with global players for partnership.
Track2Realty: Rapid urbanization has thrown up many complicated challenges for home owners as well as city planners. While most of the debate tends to revolve around how to improve living conditions in the core urban areas, real estate developers in many cities like Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore are now coming up with an entirely new solution – the creation of entirely new satellite mega-cities.
Track2Realty: The month of October saw the government easing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) norms to boost India’s construction sector. The announcement is expected to widen the sector’s investor-base by allowing FDI in smaller projects of 20,000 sq. m. instead of 50,000 sq. m. from firms with capitalization of US$5 million instead of US$10 million.
Track2Realty: Knight Frank India in association with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) in its fourth set of findings of its flagship report – the Real Estate Sentiment Index for Q3 2014 (July – September) finds that sentiments are still riding high, though investors remain cautiously optimistic. The report captures the sentiments of the supply side stakeholders on the current real estate market conditions and gives a view into the near future.
Track2Realty: It is going to be quite a hard sell for the real estate developers this festive season as a huge increase of 30% quarter–on–quarter in 2014-15 in new launches in the residential segment met with inventory further going up by 6.7% in the same period, according to an ASSOCHAM recent paper.
Track2Realty Exclusive: To say that the home buyers are coming back to the Mumbai market during the festival season would be stating the obvious. The sentiments driven real estate purchase is already visible with the reported marginal price appreciation of residential real estate across the city. The reports of price appreciation do not just reflect the price trend of the city property market; it does indicate a much larger picture where the recovery of economy and sentiments are all driving the market simultaneously.
Track2Realty Exclusive: At a time when the buzz word across the country has been the inevitable reality of urbanisation and the need to create smart cities the urban planners are wondering which are the Indian cities that can claim to be close to the desired smart index. More importantly, which are the cities that have managed urban development along with the pace of business and economy to emerge as the truly developed cities with self sustaining physical and social infrastructure that could be a magnet for big ticket investment?