Track2Realty: The slowdown in the Indian economy continued as the Reserve Bank of India revised the real GDP growth rate forecast for 2013-14 downwards to 5.0% from 5.7%. Economic slowdown has had an impact on the end user sentiments that has impacted the absorption of residential units ultimately leading to a slowdown in the values.
Track2Realty Exclusive: While the Indian real estate has been on a copy & paste mode in the last three years where not much support has been extended by the market or the policy makers, there is a strong optimism within the built environment that 2014 would be a turnaround year. Though nothing much has changed in terms of issues & concerns of the sector as another year comes to the end, some of the policy decisions in the last six months indicate the sector is finally on the road to recovery.
Track2Realty Exclusive: The Coimbatore real estate has by and large outperformed the rest of the country. This better-than-national average performance during the year 2013 has been remarkable at a time when some of the matured property markets were witness to sales plummeting with stress both at the buyers’ as well as developers’ level.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Looking back at the year 2013, Indian real estate has witnessed a variety of changes from IT perspective. The trend which started much before 2013, continued with industry’s growing focus on putting IT systems in place to manage business processes to effectively manage real estate organization.
Track2Realty Exclusive: A great challenge in real estate branding is the local versus national market. 90 per cent of the realty brands have local presence and not pan India. Most of the projects are linked locally like Prestige with Bangalore or DLF with Gurgaon.
Track2Realty: India continued to feature on the list of the world’s most expensive office markets, with New Delhi (Connaught Place – CBD) ranking at the 7th position, according to CBRE Global Research and Consulting’s semi-annual Prime Office Occupancy Costs survey. Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) bagged the 15th position, while Nariman Point stood at the 32nd position. The latest CBRE survey provides data on office rents and occupancy costs as of September 2013.
Track2Realty: There are still significant investment opportunities left in India’s real estate market. For investors looking at cost-effective projects to park their funds, this might be a right time as weak market sentiments are likely to lead to weak valuations, providing windows for investing in quality projects.
Track2Realty Exclusive: When a developer few years back launched a 5 acre project in Coimbatore dedicated to the senior living, it raised quite many eye brows. Everyone was wondering whether there is a market for such a project, exclusively conceptualised for the senior citizens. Critics even had it that the project is ahead of its time and some termed it as a project meant for parking the investment.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Once a promise has been defined, all the customer touch points need to be mapped. Everything from the website to marketing collateral to what the CEO says about the company to how the telephone is answered at corporate headquarters should reflect the promise of the corporate brand.
Track2Realty: India’s hospitality real estate space has probably come of age; and has reached a critical threshold in its learning as well as business development curves. Although the ongoing economic slowdown and uncertainty have caused hotel rates to decrease marginally in the last couple of years, India now stands at the cusp of a hotel building and rebranding boom, which should help keep rates competitive in 2013.