Menon brings with him 27 years of rich media and marketing experience and before joining Real Estate TV, he was working as COO of a media group in Chennai, the channel said in a release.

Besides Menon, Anil Nair has also joined the group as its News Head. Prior to this appointment Anil Nair was working as business journalist in the Indian Express Group.

Real Estate TV is the first channel in the country extensively engaged in tracking developments in real estate and infrastructure.

Located on a 25-acre plot in Taramani, the SEZ will include a five-star hotel or service apartments, an international convention centre and help generate direct employment for 40,000 people and indirect employment to another 15,000.

TRIL chairman RK Krishna Kumar, who is also a director of Tata Sons Ltd, said the project would prove to be a milestone towards bridging development of IT and ITES-SEZs in India.

The SEZ is to be implemented in two phases - the first phase of 2.30 million square feet will be ready by end-2009 and the remaining 1.70 million would be completed by 2011.

The joint venture agreement for the IT SEZ was signed by TIDCO chairman and managing director S. Ramasundaram and Krishnakumar here in the presence of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

TRIL is a new enterprise of Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of the Tata Group. It has embarked on several projects for real estate and infrastructure development.

Spread over an area of 130 sq km, Madurai has a population of approximately 1.3 million. Domestic flights connect the city to state capital Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. International connectivity from Madurai airport, located 13 km from the city centre, is also expected to begin this year. In fact, according to a Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) report, real estate development is increasingly moving to the southern and western parts of the city, mainly around the airport, Rirupparankundram Road and By-pass road. This is due to a scarcity of land in the CBD (Chinnakadai).

The city has witnessed encouraging commercial development over the last three-four years. The state government has transferred two land patches — 29 acres at Ilandhaikulam and 213 acres at Vadapalanji — to ELCOT for SEZ development. Sify, HCL, TCS, Wipro and CTS have booked their space for campus developments in the SEZ. Upcoming developments in Madurai include three IT/ ITeS/ SEZs, covering a total area of approximately 128 hectares.

This apart, the Tamil Nadu Housing Board proposes to set up several office and commercial complexes in five prominent places in Chennai and Madurai to meet the demand for commercial space, according to a recent state policy note. Typical rentals in CBD are in the range of Rs 32-35/sq ft/month. Further, the commercial space in newly-developing areas could fetch a rental of Rs 24-28/sq ft/month, according to data available with C&W.

The residential space in Madurai, like all other small towns, is largely skewed towards independent homes culture. However, the apartment culture has picked up due to an increasingly investor population that’s now driving the demand for residential apartments and villas. This has attracted many national and international developers such as ETA star, Hiranandani Constructions, Sahara City Homes and ETL Infrastructure to develop properties in Madurai. Sahara has acquired approximately 125 acres to develop 15,000 unit apartment complex, while Arihant has close to 21 acres earmarked for an integrated township.

The existing and established retail precincts include the surroundings of the famous Meenakshi Temple in Chinnakadai Area, Anna Nagar, KK Nagar and the By-pass Road. There is no mall culture at present, but the few proposed ones such as Vishal Mall (165,000 sq ft) and Milan Mall (85,000 sq ft) will house an Inox multiplex and will open early next year. The city has quite a few stand-alone formats on the By-pass Road and in areas like Anna Nagar and K K Nagar. Rentals in the CBD are about Rs 50 per sq ft/month.

Off-CBD locations could attract rents up to Rs 35 per sq ft/month, according to C&W estimates. Traditional prime locations like P T Rajan Road, Old Natham Road and TPK Road attract prices ranging from Rs 2,000-2,600/sq ft. New supply is largely concentrated towards south/south-east Madurai. In terms of rental, the new built-up villa in CBD and off-CBD could attract as high as Rs 15,000 and for apartments between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000.

In Bangalore’s Whitefield suburb, once a magnet for IT firms, supply outstripped absorption by 300,000 sq ft in 2007 and about 8% of the developed area remained vacant, data from real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) show. Prices are stagnating and the situation is deteriorating. In the first three months of 2008, the demand-supply mismatch was more than a million sq ft.

If Whitefield is in a bad way; the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) technology cluster on the outskirts of Chennai is deep in the doldrums, with just nine deals in the whole of 2007. Of the four million sq ft that came into the market last year, only 1.7 million sq ft were absorbed even as rentals fell by 18% and the vacancy rate was up to 11%, again according to C&W data. Most of the more than half a million sq ft that entered the market between January and March have gone a begging.

Property developers’ greed must take a major portion of the blame for the current plight, even insiders say. “The key factor contributing to the oversupply is the consistent overpricing of projects in both micro markets. Developers who priced projects at Rs 4,000 per sq ft were unknowingly killing their golden goose in a sense,” Shriram Properties managing director M Murali said.

Whitefield and the OMR cluster, where IT and technology-enabled services firms occupy most of the office space, could be delivered another blow when a government scheme which provides tax incentives to companies in so-called “technology parks” comes to an end next year.

“STP (Software Technology Park) units and business parks in both locations will take a beating in rentals with the sunset clause (for the Software Technology Parks of India scheme) ending in March 2009. Firms will now increasing look towards Special Economic Zones (SEZs), rendering a number of buildings vacant,” Mr Murali said. And a prolonged downturn in the US will only add to the misery. The OMR cluster also faces a peculiar problem: the Tamil Nadu government does not permit IT parks and STP units to lease space to non-IT firms.

“A number of developers of STP space in Chennai have started offering a variety of attractive terms such as free car-parks, incubation space while the project is under construction, lower deposits and rent-free periods so that they do not have to bring down the base rent. Given the competition, a number of them are also appointing exclusive marketing agents to market their IT parks,” Ramesh Nair, the MD of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj said.

The silver lining for property developers could be the interest from start-ups and mid-sized firms as rentals fall. Nearly a third of the transactions in both the OMR cluster and Whitefield involved small- or mid-sized firms.

Mr. Sivasankaran has mandated CB Richard Ellis to sell the property through an auction, with five bidders indicating early interest. While multiple sources confirmed interests from DLF, Nitesh Estates and HDFC Realty, unconfirmed reports indicated that local developer Arihant and Bangalore-based Sobha Developers are also in the fray.

Mr. Sivasankaran had acquired the property in early 2006 for Rs 100-110 crore, sources said. The bidders, like DLF and Nitesh, may be eyeing the property for premium residential units, which, going by the current FSI of 1.5, could see 4 lakh sq ft of fresh development. The area has houses of leading industrialists, including Murugappa Group family members, and Japanese Consulate. Recently, DMK leader and son of chief minister MK Karunanidhi, MK Stalin, has moved there.

It is believed that a leading local developer True Value Homes may sit down with HDFC Realty for joint development, if the latter shows up with the winning bid. Earlier, True Value Homes had attempted to join with Mr. Sivasankaran for developing premium residential apartments on the land.

Several local real estate sources said, in view soft market conditions, the maximum price it can fetch is Rs 3.25 crore per ground (56 grounds in 3 acre). Recalling the objections raised in the past over building multi-story buildings in the posh area, the realty sources added that it is not easy to take up development unless the bidder is familiar with the local conditions.

However, the national players, which may view Chennai as a more sable market in terms of real estate prices, may put in an aggressive bid that could take the auction price t Rs 225/250 in the highest band. A few months back, Bangalore-based Nitesh Estates made a winning Rs 640-crore bid for a nine-acre plot on Chamiers Road, which is in close to Beacon House.

Nitesh is in the midst of developing a one million sq ft mixed use development including luxury hotel, retail, commercial space and serviced apartments.

Beacon House came to the fold of UB chairman Vijay Mallya after he acquired B&C. Later, when the company was acquired by Indonesia’s Polysindo, it decided to sell the property making use o the scrapping of urban land ceiling act. Since Mr. Sivasankaran had picked up stake in B&C, it helped him to clinch the deal.

It works out to roughly Rs 20,000 per sq.ft. What’s more, the reserve price is a base price for bidders who are expected to compete aggressively for this prime property in the heart of the city.

In terms of the price per sq ft, it would set a new record for the city. It is way above the previous highest, which was Rs 16,765 per sq ft paid by entrepreneur Shyam Kothari (Mukesh Ambani’s brother-in-law) for a 104,381 sq. ft. plot in the posh Boat Club area last year.

A mall in Chennai has been delayed for over a year. It’s not just shopping centers; almost 90% of the total construction in the city has been in limbo in spite of the projects being announced a year ago. The reason is that the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority, the governing body for approvals, has been delaying the files for well over a year.

Chitti Babu of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association said that the project approvals were delayed by 12 to 18 months and without approval the investments on the land are very high. With the growing interest rates all the builders are finding it difficult to manage.

The situation is worse in the IT space. According to the IT policy in Tamil Nadu, builders do not need an approval to construct the building but they need one to start operations. This has led to a large number of newly constructed buildings to lie vacant.

Ramesh Nair,Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj said, “Most projects today are partly funded by private equity funds and private equity funds are looking at returns in 4-5 years. So, if the project gets delayed by more than a certain period of time the return obviously gets a hit.”

This is true for developers like DLF. Their housing projects were a sell-out in Chennai. But the company has not even enchased its cheques as their project is stuck due to lack of approvals. The CMDA officials were not available for comment.

Almost all the real estate developers in Chennai are not starting off their projects because they don’t have approval in hand. And if this delay continues, the much talked about real estate boom of the city might just remain in the papers.

According to the Chennai-based real estate advisor, Hemdev International Realty Services, at least a couple of Israeli real estate majors have lined up mega investment projects in the city which include both commercial and residential projects. According to them, Israeli firm Elbit Medical Imaging Ltd has invested close to $135 million in a Chennai property which will have both commercial and residential projects. The company had already acquired land for the hybrid project.

Similarly, PBEL, a consortium consisting of two Israeli firms Property and Building Corporation and Electra Real Estate and Belgium’s Millennium Diamond Holdings and Hyderabad-based Incor Infrastructure is planning to invest $ 1 billion in the Indian real estate market with a focus on Chennai and Hyderabad. The company already has a project running in Hyderabad. It is scouting for close to 125 acres of land in these cities. Other than Israeli firms, leading real estate Companies, both domestic and foreign, are looking for opportunities in the Chennai market. For instance, Singapore real estate giant Far East Organization is keen to get a toe-hold in the Chennai property market. Similarly, leading property developers from Kolkata are also looking for opportunities in the Chennai market.

According to real estate trackers, the stability in the Chennai property market is one of the major reasons for the real estate firms to make a beeline to the city. The boom in the local Economy fuelled spurred by IT and related sectors are a major reason fuelling growth of Chennai property market, they say.