Latest Property News on 'Bangalore'

Ozonegroup Plans Residential Project in Chennai

Real estate firm Ozonegroup is all set to commence its Rs 2,500 crore residential project in the city on 42 acres of land. The project, ‘The Metrozone’ at Anna Nagar, would have 1,600 apartments across 29 towers. “This is our flagship project in city and the total project cost is Rs 2,500 crore'’, Ozonegroup Managing Director Mr S Vasudevan told reporters here. He said the project would have three basement levels to park 6,000 cars and a piped gas network. As part of promoting ‘Green’ power, the project would have solar lighting and the rainwater storage systems, he said.

The residential units range between 1,555 square feet for double bedroom apartments (Rs 95 lakh) to 4,818 square feet for penthouses (Rs 1.5 crore), he said. The first phase of the project is likely to be completed by 2011. “Construction is expected to begin by June 29 and the entire project should be completed by 2013-2014′’, he said. Mr Vasudevan said the Metrozone would have 15-17 screen multiplexes and one lakh square feet area had been allotted for food and entertainment. “We are talking with the multiplexes and will be signing agreements on this very soon'’, Ozonegroup Chief Operating Officer Mr K S Sudarshan said. Read More »

Developers focus on Service Apartment to Fight Tough Times

After being launched in cities like Delhi, Bangalore and Pune, service apartments will soon be a reality in Tier II and III cities. Considering the growing number of corporate honchos visiting the tri-city, Ludhiana and Amritsar, real estate developers will soon introduce service apartments in these cities. Another reason that has evoked developers’ interest in service apartments is the slump in the real estate industry. The negligible sale of apartments in the tri-city has forced them to convert these into service apartments.

Service apartments, which are fully-furnished with all facilities, are an alternative to five-star hotels. Unlike a normal apartment, a service apartment is given only on lease or rent and is a good option for travelling professionals and nuclear families. Soon, Omaxe will launch a few limited service apartments in Omaxe Royal Residency on Pakhowal Road, Ludhiana. These apartments, with an area of 650 square feet each, will be launched in July. “Ludhiana has marked its presence in India as a commercial city. It has many industries, which result in a number of corporate heads visiting this city. These apartments will offer them a nice and cheaper accommodation compared to hotels,” Avneet Soni, director of Omaxe Limited, said. Read More »

Sobha Developer Plans Tacts to Keep Cash Flowing

After struggling for months to sell large parts of its land bank to repay part of its debt, Bangalore-based Sobha Developers Ltd has changed tack. The realty firm is now scouting for joint developments and looking to sell smaller plots to keep the cash flowing. Several realty and infrastructure projects have been deferred or scrapped since late last year after funds became scarce. Consequently, most developers have stayed away from buying land or are negotiating hard for steeper discounts despite an up to 30% fall in property prices. Over the past six months, Sobha Developers has managed to sell only small land parcels, said chief financial officer S. Baaskaran. In March, the firm, already stuck with an inventory of unsold high-end apartments, made its first attempt at selling residential plots for quick cash flow.

Saddled with a debt of Rs1,850 crore, the firm has outlined plans to raise Rs200 crore through land sales and some Rs1,000 crore from qualified institutional placements, or QIPs, in which promoters of listed entities sell shares to institutional buyers such as banks without involving retail investors. Sobha Developers has sold 64 of 94 plots in its Bangalore and Coimbatore projects, earlier meant for large projects. “There has been some movement in the land market but we still have a lot of land to be sold (including in prime areas such as a 1.5 acre property near MG Road in Bangalore),” said Baaskaran. “We have also dropped out of ongoing negotiations for new land buys.” Sobha Developers had been trying to sell the plot, where it had planned a shopping mall and a hotel, for four months. But the high asking price of Rs120 crore had kept away buyers. Read More »

Sobha Developers, HDIL to raise funds via QIPs

Following the success of Unitech and Indiabulls in raising funds through qualified institutional placements (QIPs), at least two other real estate players are taking the same route, with plans to raise Rs 3,000 crore by June-end. According to the market sources, the Bangalore-based Sobha Developers and Mumbai-based Housing Development and Infrastructure (HDIL) are considering raising funds through QIP.

A senior HDIL official told ET that the company’s top management had a meeting on Wednesday afternoon to consider raising around Rs 2000 crore through QIP. When contacted by ET, Hariprakash Pandey, deputy general manager (finance), HDIL, neither accepted nor denied the news. “We would make an announcement at an appropriate time,” he said. Read More »

Real Estate Investors Eyeing Change in GOVT

As the country awaits the result of the polls, everyone would be interested in knowing which party will come to power. An online real estate portal had conducted a survey to gauge beliefs of an average property seeker about the elections and their expectations from the forthcoming government. While seeking people’s choice for coalition government, city-wise in eight cities of the country, it was found that Ahmedabad topped with 51% respondents for being more hopeful for BJP led-coalition that would boost the realty sector. Bangalore and Pune followed Ahmedabad with 42% and 37% respondents who voted for BJP respectively. On views of buying/investing in property before the formation of the new government, the respondents had mixed reactions on it. However, 51% of the survey takers were willing to hold back their realty purchases until the future government comes in power. Of all, Ahmedabad ranked third with 52%, followed by Hyderabad and Mumbai with 57% and 54% respectively for holding property buying while 40% are ready for immediate investment and 9% of the total respondents are undecided.

The national online survey ‘My Vote. My Makaan’, conducted by makaan.com, covered leading eight metros and tier II cities of India including Ahmedabad and was conducted on the portal between 22 to 30 April 2009 and saw participation from over 3,563 property seekers nationally. Agreeing on the same, National head-sales and operation of IndiaProperty.com, Shrikanth T, an online realty portal said “We also have been experiencing that people are holding to buy property. In many cases some of the property owners are avoiding to sell their property.” This could be because they would be expecting some benefits from the government in terms of tax relations etc, he added. Referring to the survey about the property prices going up or down with the formation of any party, BJP or Congress, Shrikanth said that who so every government comes must intend to fulfill a common man’s need, ‘roti kapda aur makaan’. When checked on the income bases the lower income group prefers the Congress-led coalition, the middle and upper middle income group favors for BJP. Buyers from lower & mid level income groups flood the Indian property market today.

Signs of Revival in Real Estate Sector

After witnessing an acute slowdown during the third and fourth quarter of 2008, the real estate sector has shown some recovery in the first quarter of 2009 ending March 31. If trends of absorption for the period January-March 2009 are any indication, a report prepared by PropEquity Research suggested there has been a surge in absorption in majority of the cities. A recent study conducted by PropEquity across Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon in NCR reveals that absorption has been high among the residential new launches in the first quarter of 2009 in Mumbai, Chennai and Gurgaon. The study attributes the success rate in absorption to the price correction and reduction in unit sizes introduced by developers in these cities. However, Bangalore and Hyderabad, which witnessed fewer new launches during the period, experienced a low absorption.

The real estate sector experienced one of the worst kinds of slowdown in demand because of rise in the interest rates in the January-March 2008, by almost 2 percentage points, to 12%. At the same time, the prevailing prices of residential apartments in most of the cities made them unaffordable for most buyers. The situation further worsened after global financial markets got affected due to the failure of banks and b ro ke r i n g houses in the US and Europe. This also affected Indian real estate market very badly and demand plummeted. According to the report, While October-December 2008 saw the nadir with absorption of only 1,113 units in Mumbai, the first quarter of 2009 witnessed the launch of over 14,478 residential apartment units and a corresponding absorption of 5,746 units. As against this, during October-December 2008, 3,096 units were launched, the report said. Similarly, in Gurgaon, during January-March 2009, 815 units were sold while 4,490 units were launched. As against this, in October-December 2008 quarter, only 587 units were sold from 3,708 units launched. Hence, both the absorption and launch figure showed sign of recovery. Read More »

No Fresh Supply of Mall Space for South India between January and March

The three major cities in south India — Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore —did not witness fresh supply of mall space between January and March this year, according to Cushman & Wakefield. However, these cities would see supply of 4.35 million sft by the year end, the real estate services firm said in its report recently. “Retail real estate across India continued to reel under the current economic pressure while retailers continued to show their apathy towards expansion plans.”

Though Bangalore witnessed no new supply, some sporadic leasing activities in the existing malls kept rentals across established locations like Mysore Road and Vittal Mallya Road stable. Rental values in upcoming malls, however, recorded some correction. Bangalore is likely to see about 2 million sft of mall supply in 2009, of which approximately 0.3 million sft is expected in the Whitefield micro market during the second quarter of 2009. Read More »

Bangalore Municipal Authority Accuses DLF for Illegally Selling Flats

The Bangalore municipal authority said in a public notice on 6 May that it has not yet given mandatory sanctions for development of the project, DLF Westend Heights, at New Town, off Banerghatta Road. DLF Ltd, India’s largest property developer by market value, has been accused of illegally selling apartments without mandatory sanctions at its maiden project in Bangalore. The Bangalore municipal authority said in a public notice on 6 May that it has not yet given mandatory sanctions for development of the project, DLF Westend Heights, at New Town, off Banerghatta Road. The municipality, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP), is the final authority for clearing building sanctions in the city.

It also said DLF has only got approval from the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) for constructing four floors in all the buildings at its project, while the firm’s been advertising 18 floors. The Gurgaon-based developer launched the 80-acre project earlier this year after reformatting it from premium homes to smaller, less-expensive residences costing Rs1,850 per sq. ft. On its part, DLF said the company has kept its customers informed about the status of the approvals and will not start construction till it gets all the clearances. “DLF has paid Rs14.60 crore to BBMP towards betterment charges last August, which indicates that it would seek approval from the authority,” it said, adding that it started bookings from customers only after studying the legalities and taking into consideration the approval process underway. The developer has been attempting to launch the project since early 2008, but was held back by delays in getting approvals and because of changes in the design of the project, which will be built in phases. Read More »

Small and Compact can be the New Home Trend in Bangalore

If this developer manages to set a trend, homes in Bangalore could well go the Mumbai way - small and compact. And in these times of recession, when a genuine buyer is not able to loosen his purse strings for that prized home, a product in the Rs 4 lakh to Rs 19 lakh category is indeed a blessing. CSC Constructions has launched three projects in Bangalore — at Attibele near the Electronics City, Devanahalli, and Sarjapur Road -hoping to make “home buying within the reach of one and all.” All the projects will have apartments in the studio, single bedroom, two bedroom and three bedroom categories. The target customers include senior citizens, ex-Servicemen, young couples, first-time buyers, government employees and all those who would want to move from rentals to EMIs without any difficulty.

P C Sukanand, managing director, CSC Constructions, said, “We cater to all income levels. We would provide what other developers have been providing all these years, but at realistic prices. We have cut down on our margins instead of loading our profits on to the cost of construction.” The company also plans to launch six more projects in the city in the next six weeks. “Depending on how we do here, we plan to go to Mumbai also,” said Sukanand. The company would be investing about Rs 20-35 crore in each project towards development, with the landowner being the joint developer. “We are not over-exposing ourselves to a single location, and we are going across multiple locations, thus offering customers a choice of location,” said Rohit Chugani, executive director of the company. The company is also in talks with private equity players for funding for future projects. “We hope to close in on few deals soon,” Chugani added. Read More »

DLF Decides to Go Slow on New Projects

The Karnataka government returned Rs 400 crore to cash-strapped DLF on May Day. Separately, the country’s biggest developer has decided to go slow on new projects in seven of the eight verticals it operates in — the exception being residential property development, reports DNA. Housing currently accounts for about 60 per cent of the company’s revenues and this skew could accentuate substantially with the change in strategy. As part of this, several projects including an 18 acre commercial project at Whitefield in Bangalore and a 5 acre mall project in Chennai are likely to be converted into residential and mixed development projects, quoted a company source in the report.

There will be a go-slow on commercial property, hotels, cinema and infrastructure projects, the source added. The decision to go slow on non-housing verticals has been communicated internally to the senior management of the company, the report said. The company is currently executing 36 million sq ft of space. Meanwhile, Rajiv Singh, vice chairman, DLF, said in a conference call on Saturday that the company will raise Rs 5,500 crore through sale of non-strategic assets, a move he explained as “deleveraging and liquidity preservation”. Singh said sale of assets worth Rs 3,500 crore is currently on, and the company is trying to cobble together another Rs 2,000 crore of disposable assets. Read More »