At about US$151 per sq. ft. per annum, Delhi’s Central Business District (CBD) of Connaught Place was ranked as the sixth most expensive prime office market in the world, according to CBRE Research’s semi-annual Global Prime Office Occupancy Costs survey.
Despite slowdown, Mumbai remains the most lucrative investment destination in India, says the second edition of Knight Frank India Residential Investment Advisory Report 2016.
Today, the world sees India as a land of opportunity for business and investment. RBI head Raghuram Rajan said in mid-September that while fellow BRICs have deep problems, India appears to be an island of relative calm in an ocean of turmoil.
The IT/ITeS sector has clearly been driving corporate real estate in the country; and consequently, much of the development in this space is being propelled by IT and back-office demand for workspaces, as per CBRE’s India report – Real Estate & Workplace Strategies of Shared Services Occupiers.
Despite of the high work pressure, unprofessional work culture & depressing environment, it has been the fat pay packet that was a magnet for the professionals to join real estate. However, the slowdown has exposed the professionals to a new reality check where job cuts are across the board, career growth is stagnant and it is increasingly getting depressive for the professionals to continue with a job in the sector.
“How long can a sector survive which is borrowing at 48 per cent from private lenders to serve the interest of previous debt raised at much lower rate,” asks a banker. His concern is not without valid reasons. Developers experimented with all funding options but still many of them are now being forced to seek other sources of funding which not only comes at a significantly higher cost but also where the source of fund is unregulated.
In the evaluation of sustainability of a housing market, the absorption of office space is the prime indicator across the world. After all, it is the economic activity and the job magnet that fuels the demand for new houses. The city of Mumbai has always been blessed on that count due to demand and supply dynamics.
Over 75 per cent of the total 3,540 live projects with total outstanding investments worth over Rs 14 lakh crore attracted by the real estate sector across India remained non-starter as of financial year 2014-15, noted a just-concluded study by apex industry body ASSOCHAM.
In the last five years of our editorial journey our constant endeavor has been to establish Track2Realty as a constructive critic of Indian real estate. In the process we have also succeeded in setting up a few benchmark along the way where Track2Realty has been accepted as the milestone of high quality journalism.
The meteoric growth of e-commerce in India in recent years was broadly seen as a threat to physical retail. Seemingly bearing this out, ASSOCHAM states that e-commerce has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~30%, while retail sector growth has been at 15% CAGR over the last five years.