Track2Realty: The alarm on a tough upcoming budget was sounded when the newly elected Prime Minister said that “time has come to take tough decisions in the interest of the nation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking all due measures towards his vision of a ‘Shresht Bharat’, amidst some calibrated tough measures.
Track2Realty: The commercial real estate office segment in India is primarily a leasing market. Although Indian firms have traditionally preferred to purchase office properties for their own businesses, multi-national entities in the country typically prefer to lease office space.
Track2Realty Exclusive: When Ajit Bundelkar, a stock market adviser, was suggested by the property broker to invest in a property beyond Thane market he was taken by surprise. Thane itself has just started shaping up and someone was suggesting to look not within but beyond. However, for him it was the same trusted broker on whose advice he had invested in a Thane apartment when he moved from Surat to Mumbai in 2009.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Only some years ago, when the National Housing Board brought out a survey report saying that India will need at least 26 million houses by the end of 2020, that the idea of privately built township or townships built on PPP model first germinated. Large tracts of land which were lying at the outskirts of cities were looked at with a lot of hope and dreams to offer better living to Indians at affordable prices.
Track2Realty: Maharashtra Government will soon come out with cluster development policy. This was announced on Friday, June 27, by Sachin Ahir, Minister of State for Housing, Slum Improvement, Housing Repairs and Reconstruction, Urban Land Ceiling, Industries, Mines, Transport, Environment and Parliamentary Affairs. He was speaking at the real estate conclave organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Mumbai.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Coming out of the shadow of Gurgaon-Manesar the once sleepy town in Bhiwadi is fast shedding the tag of affordable destination. What was initially conceptualised as an affordable residential market for those who could not afford high property prices in Gurgaon and for the industries that could settle in a moderately priced market has shaped up so very well that Bhiwadi today has emerged as a case study in how even the extension of a satellite town should be positioned.
Track2Realty: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday, June 26, ordered the Mumbai police Crime Branch to file an FIR against four persons, including Hiranandani Developers co-founder and managing director Niranjan Hiranandani and two police officers, in a complaint filed by a 28-year-old woman from Powai.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The Government of India has been re-evaluating policy measures and modifying these or initiating fresh mandates in order to give a boost to the industry. Changes in policies pertaining to SEZs towards reducing area requirements, the easing of norms for external commercial borrowing (ECB) for development of affordable housing and the augmentation of limits for listed NCDs will go a long way in clearing bottlenecks faced by the sector.
Track2Realty: In India’s competitive real estate market, luxury housing projects have been launched aplenty over the last couple of years. So much so that a conservative market like Chennai, for instance, is likely to witness about 1,500 units of ultra-luxury homes—budgeted between Rs. 5–20 crore—within the next 12 months.
Track2Realty Exclusive: India has traditionally been a reluctant urbaniser and the developers have been even more reluctant to take the roads less travelled. For long it is the government agencies that have been catalyst to land acquisition and hand it over to the developers. Now that the Land Acquisition Bill is set to change the entire ballgame, Track2Realty wonders whether it is time to take a few case studies where a developer has dared to opt for ‘Destination Development’. Though such cases have been few and far between, the road ahead indicates even lesser first movers in the ring.