As per a Track2Realty pan-India survey, no les than 82 per cent single professionals have found it challenging in one way or the other to get a house on rent. This is not a reality of small towns but in the top 10 cities of India known to have metropolitan culture & lifestyle, singles are finding it hard to get n apartment on rent.
Mumbai has been the undisputed financial capital of India. The emergence of other business destinations, like Bangalore, Gurgaon or Pune could not take the sheen out of the city, even in the wake of infrastructure deficit and other urban problems plaguing the peninsular city. Now the Mumbai city is poised to elevate itself to the next level of business destination. The MMRDA (Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority) plans to make Mumbai a major global financial hub.
Urban habitation at the cost of environmental concerns have globally been debated and contested. In India the environmental concerns have often stalled big-ticket infrastructure projects and the government also vows its commitment to encourage the eco friendly and sustainable developments. However, some recent decisions have exposed the gap between the lip service of the policy makers and their commitment to the cause of eco friendly and sustainable developments.
The penetration of basic personal packages of insurance like health or home is dismally low. Health Insurance is less than 10 per cent of the people who can afford it. Home insurance is still less at hardly 1 per cent. So, there is scope for personal lines of insurance especially the retail lines of business to grow exponentially.
In residential space, the speculators can go to North India and invest in a pre-launch and make money in one year or two years. For mid to long-term investors the commercial spaces and retail work much better. But if one is looking at the real long term then one should better invest in land; nothing else can give as much returns as the land.
Amidst all the misleading claims and marketing exaggerations, location mapping is the most glaring one. Generally maps are not to scale and give the wrong perception of the location of the project. For example, the brochure will say 10 minutes from the airport or commercial district; it does not state distance in kilometres.
The supply of quality housing even today is confined to eight key cities. It is not that the new cities are not coming up, but neither the investors nor even the end users want to buy a house in Tier II cities today. The dream and aspiration is always Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune kind of life.
Are the CBDs really losing out as the benchmark of economic activity in the major cities of India? Well, if only Gurgaon business destinations as against Connaught Place or Nehru Place in Delhi-NCR are any indication, or if only BKC and Navi Mumbai as against Nariman Point in Mumbai is any indication, then the CBDs have lost a significant ground by all means of reputation and economic scale.
Las Vegas, London and also Ghaziabad in the same league! Believe it or not but the western hinterland of Uttar Pradesh was chosen to be having the potential to be among the 10 most dynamic cities of the world. A Newsweek survey, which put the city on the global map, said so as early as in 2006, but since then it seems the city has weathered many challenges in its quest for glory and fame as an urban metropolis city.
Buyers today wish to be part of the construction process. The question is to what extent it is feasible to bridge the trust deficit in the sector by involving the buyer. For example, a developer with plans of multi-city villa project has asked the home buyers to customize their requirements themselves on the developer’s website. The idea is to get the feedback of the end users’ needs and aspirations.