Track2Realty Exclusive: The current environment necessitates greater discipline in marketing, steered by a well-conceived strategy. Absorption levels in many cities, both in the residential and commercial segments would indicate that developers are carrying surplus inventory on their balance-sheets.
Track2Realty: India Ratings & Research (Ind-Ra) maintains a negative outlook on the infrastructure sector for H213, largely due to unfavourable macro-economic variables and project level stresses.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Realtors are also increasingly smarting to deal with the criticism as digital media is proving to be a deadly two-way weapon. Ravi Saund, COO of CHD Developers asserts it has not deterred them in any way; it has only helped in getting closer to the customer base and understand their needs and expectations from a developer in today’s market.
Track2Realty Exclusive: As corrective steps we need to form a regularized official body to maintain consistency and transparency. There were only two cities in the world which were over populated and this has gone up to 29 cities with dense population in past one decade.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The digital medium, however, seems to be evolving fast and some of the realtors have adopted pro-active social media strategy to focus on consumer connect, feedback, consumer research to identify their needs and requirements.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Some of the companies are using online media for generating sales lead; while others are focused on customer relations. With the medium new and realty more or less reluctant in the initial stages, there are very few who are actually understanding the medium and adapting themselves to what others think as a necessary evil. Tata Housing believes in using the medium for engaging with the customers more than just generating sales leads. Brotin Banerjee, MD & CEO of Tata Housing shares with Track2Realty how they strategise their social media usage. Excerpts of the interview:
Track2Realty Exclusive: There are analysts who believe the retail investors need to be exposed to this asset class through an institutionalized vehicle, which would be regulated. REITS is the ideal solution.
Track2Realty: Office markets in India registered a downward trend in absorption in the first half of the year (Jan–June 2013), according to the latest report by Cushman & Wakefield. The total net absorption across top eight cities in H1 2013 was noted at 10.9 million square feet (msf) which denoted a decline of 15% compared to the same period last year.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The question is why have not they blocked the mutual funds then? Pranay Vakil, Chairman of Knight Frank India has a simple take, “Because the mutual funds lobby is larger than the bankers’ lobby. They could not do anything about it. The companies into mutual funds are so large; they might just foray into banking.”
Track2Realty: India Ratings & Research (Ind-Ra) has maintained a negative outlook on the Indian construction sector for the second half of 2013 (H213). This is in view of the continued execution and liquidity challenges facing the sector, identified as major constraints in the beginning of the year. The impact of these challenges is likely to intensify in the near term.