Track2Realty Exclusive: Irregularities exist in the real estate sector and add to the common perception of the sector being opaque. For example, in the primary market, builder-buyer agreements are often one-sided that favour the development firm.
Track2Realty: The tremendous rate of real estate development across the globe, and especially young, emerging nations, is imposing immense pressure on the environment and its natural resources. With such a rapid development, there is a lot at stake when we look at important factors such as energy availability and environmental sustainability.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Till very recently, unlike several other industries, real estate used to take a back seat in times of a sluggish market or when there was some controversy around. Any negative market sentiment or slowdown more often than not led to newspapers’ property supplements growing thinner and vacant hoardings in and around city becoming common. Prima facie it was seen to be a sales driven exercise where real estate companies’ approach has been to advertise for selling their product and not creating a brand icon. But that seems to be only half the truth in today’s context as the sector is doling out more money for advertising despite slowdown.
Track2Realty: K. Chandrashekar Rao, Chief Minister of Telangana State inaugurated on Tuesday, July 15, Phase 2.1 and launched Phase 2.2 of WaveRock, an IT Park in the heart of IT/ITeS SEZ of Gachibowli. This project is a part of larger IT/ITeS SEZ promoted by Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Ltd (TSIIC).
Track2Realty: Real estate is a business that requires regular funding, be it at the acquisition or execution stage. To raise funds, developers in India opt for modes like joint venture, pre-sale and construction finance. Construction finance can work out cheaper but is difficult to obtain because of the strict guidelines laid down by the Reserve Bank of India.
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: 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: The global house price boom continued during the year to Q1 (first quarter) 2014, gathering pace. Despite strongly rising housing markets in Taiwan and the Philippines, the momentum seems to be passing momentarily from Asia, where interventionist authorities have slowed housing markets in Hong Kong, Singapore and China. Instead, action is shifting to the Pacific, the Gulf, and (less forcefully) to Europe, which are all seeing strong price rises.
Track2Realty: Cushman & Wakefield has expanded into Malaysia with a new office in Kuala Lumpur that is C&W’s 35th office in Asia Pacific.
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.