Track2Realty Exclusive: To say that the year 2013 has been stressful for the Indian real estate would be like stating the obvious. A major reason why the sector could not perform up to its true potential this year is the negative market sentiments.
Track2Realty-Agencies: Lodha Group has acquired the Canadian embassy building in London’s Mayfair district for $530 million (Rs 3,300 crore) in its biggest move overseas. Lodha Group, which claims to be India’s largest real estate developer, has exchanged contracts to acquire the landmark MacDonald House in central London from.
Track2Realty: Dubai becomes the first country to formally get the government support to The International Property Measurement Standard (IPMS). The IPMS, which is being developed by a coalition of 22 professional and not-for-profit organisations from around the world, including the IMF, RICS and BOMA will address global inconsistencies in the way property is measured, leading to greater transparency and increased investor confidence.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The multiplier effect of real estate sector and its capacity for generating employment is well recognized. It is estimated that the sector contributes close to 6 per cent to the gross domestic product (GDP) of India and is estimated to be growing at 20 per cent per annum.
Track2Realty-Agencies: Shriram Properties the Bangalore-based realty arm of the Shriram Group, is understood to have up lined up discussions with key global players including Mapletree and Ascendas to sell its Gateway SEZ, a 1.3 million square feet information technology special economic zone in Chennai for $150 million.
Track2Realty-Agencies: While the promoters of realty firms in India are wary of selling stake and instead choosing institutional placement programme (IPP) over share auction to bring down holding to comply with regulatory norms, Bangalore-based Puravankara Projects has also plans to raise around Rs 450 through IPP route.
Track2Realty-Agencies: Real estate industry and property consultants today hailed the RBI’s decision to cut key policy rates, saying that it is a positive step that would boost housing demand and encourage foreign investment in the sector.
Realty sector in India has witnessed more than $2-billion private equity investments in the last 12 months, with investors treading cautiously, according to real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield.
There was no holistic planning for SEZs to position them strategically for being complementary to each other and serving their own market niches respectively. The Ministry of Commerce that provides in-principle approvals to new SEZs on the basis of pre-feasibility reports being submitted by the respective state governments, soon seem to have lost its monitoring mechanism. Secondly, the SEZ was not synchronized with other schemes for development of specialized industrial parks.
In all markets around the globe, challenging market conditions – whilst painful at the time – do have a beneficial long-term impact on the market in that they sort out the ‘wheat from the chaff’.