Track2Realty Exclusive: India, although not by plan, is experiencing a boom in once relatively obscure cities. Its rising urban centers are not confined to four metro cities or Bangalore and Ahmedabad, and load on urban land and overall infrastructure demands India must take learnings from global experience of redevelopment.
Track2Realty Exclusive: On a closer look there are big and serious questions on the authenticity and prima facie it appears as if the categories have been customised to fit in the highest bidder.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The debate of promoter versus professional driven realty companies gained momentum in the year 2012 because high attrition at the top level of realty sector has been in the news throughout the year. The Managing Directors of Indiabulls Real Estate and Peninsula Land quit in the month of October. So did the real estate heads of two property funds, Indiareit and Everstone Capital. Most of them either moved to other realty companies, starting their own ventures or shifting streams to join consultancies.
Track2Realty Exclusive: There is a school of thought within the sector which suggests the nature of the business is more suitable to be carried smoothly as promoter-driven. Though officially no one wanted to be quoted but some of the developers admitted to Track2Realty that the nature of real estate business demands more grounded entrepreneurs and not high flying professionals for whom more money in the sector is the only traction for job hopping.
The Indian realty sector is facing an acute scarcity of labour as on today. The fast emerging problem will soon drive the realty sector to take to large scale mechanization and what is often referred to as project management. The propensity can be clearly understood based on the premise that the shortage of labour is projected to rise to about 65% mark by the next decade.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The realty market has been pretty exposed to the greedy investors and vulture funding, not venture funding. In desperation the developers often lost track of what kind of funding was required and met with the disaster. Amidst the cyclic very high and very low there has been off balance debt-equity ratio as well. Of late, some developers tried within the box and some outside it. The needs and solutions are different for listed and unlisted companies. Still the sector is in search of right funding mechanism and as Track2Realty finds, are guinea pigs in the funding market.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Conceptually across the world integrated townships have gone beyond a well-planned housing complex that meets daily needs of its residents to a functioning city that aims at self reliance. The townships being built today have a balanced configuration of residential and commercial spaces intermingled with well-developed infrastructure and recreational amenities besides the green and open spaces.
Track2Realty: Mumbai-Pune developer Kumar Urban Development Limited (KUL) has launched second phase of its integrated eco-friendly township, KUL Ecoloch, in Mahalunge, behind Balewadi Stadium, Pune.
Track2Realty Exclusive: For quite some time the developers in Mumbai were making pitch for the review of FSI in the city which they termed as archaic. Their grouse has not been lacking the merit also.
Track2Realty: The prime office space segment across key cities in India are witnessing an improvement in sentiment from last year. According to CBRE’s latest report, India Office Market View Q1 2013, prime office space absorption across key cities in India witnessed approximately 17% increase in Q1, 2013 as compared to Q1, 2012.