Dewan Architects & Engineers, architecture and engineering consultancy firm, has drawn up an ambitious plan to expand its footprints in the Indian realty business. The company recently announced its venture into the burgeoning Indian real estate market, in a move that comes as part of Dewan’s strategic expansion plans to reach out to more markets in South East Asia.
Godrej Properties (GPL) has announced creation of a residential development platform with Rs. 770 Crore of equity commitments comprising of a group of global investors led by Dutch pension services provider APG, one of the largest pension fund managers and real estate investors in the world. The investor group also includes Sparinvest Property Fund II, a global real estate fund-of-funds managed by Sparinvest Property Investors.
Below the line marketing company Theme Ventures has signed a group of well-known real estate companies in Mumbai to sell the residential properties directly to the corporate employees by setting up shops inside the large work premises, the news reports said.
In the wake of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) imposing a hefty penalty of Rs. 630 crore on DLF, the anti-monopoly regulator has been flooded with a host of real estate related consumer complaints which may not be in the ambit of CCI. CCI should draw a line that bifurcates between what falls in its domain and what is in the consumer protection ambit. However, in the absence of scientific economic analysis of the relevant market, both in product category and geographic category, the two legs of the relevant market, the sector is keeping its fingers crossed as there has been a clear anomaly in defining the relevant market by the CCI.
Disney Consumer Products India, the licensing & merchandising arm of The Walt Disney Company India, has done its first licensing deal in the real estate sector with Mumbai-based real estate company Sunteck Realty to launch Disney Inspired Homes in Goregaon, the Northern suburb of Mumbai.
Anticipating a significant rate cut by the RBI, disappointed real estate community has ring alarm bells and forecast more slump due to the high interest rate regime. Pointing out that the capital and labour intensive sector plays a key role in employment generation and accelerating growth, industry body CREDAI says the government has also been losers of revenue due to neglect of the sector and risks attributed to real estate and the RBI advisories against lending to real estate have only harmed the sector and made housing costlier for consumers, apart from affecting the economy.
Spiraling property prices and slump in home sales have forced the Union Housing Ministry to think out-of-the-box solutions. After the decision to set up a high-level committee to recommend policy interventions to facilitate creation of rental housing stocks, the ministry has now sought views from private developers and builders to evolve a strategy for reducing the time taken in approval of real estate projects that can help bring down the cost of houses.
Over the last year, there has been an unequivocal crystallization of Indian cities that continue to attract serious investment into real estate. This is directly correlated to the economic dynamics now working in the country. If India is to achieve even a conservative GDP growth of 6% per year, it emerges that only three cities – Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore – have the potential to deliver. The reason for this is that close to 2/3rd of the overall development of office space in the country is now taking place in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
There is a clear disconnect between what home buyers want and what they get. And it is here that the home buyers are ready to pay more to get what they see to believe. While the frequency of launching new residential projects have declined in the last year or so, there is also sizeable inventory building up that is available for buyers who are willing to make that investment.
Despite the market slowdown and high competitiveness among the ‘Big Boys’ in the Indian residential real estate business, smaller builders of residential projects can still corner a healthy market share. It is all a matter of knowing which league to play in, and how to play.