Latest Property News on 'Mumbai'

Mumbai Builders Focusing on Luxury Flats Targeting NRI Customers

Mumbai developers seem to have given up on housing for the middle-class. If you thought the realty revival in the city would come through middle-level affordable housing, you cannot be more off the mark. Most new launches are looking at the Rs1-crore residential houses project.

Take Kalpataru developers — it is building a 750-unit project — Kalpataru Aura — in Ghatkopar. The project launched a couple of months ago has properties in the price range of Rsl.25 crore to Rsl.50 crore. Its Malad project, Kalpataru Pinnacle, will have 80 exclusive apartments, each priced at around Rs3 crore. Lodha Developers has launched a 42-storey apartment building, Lodha Imperia, at Bhandup, with flat prices inching towards the Rs1-crore mark. The target audience of these builders is apparently NRIs from Europe and the US. Read More »

Big developers Partner with Local Developers to Complete Projects Quickly

Hyderabad-based PBEL Property Development (India) Ltd has a new strategy to break into unfamiliar markets: partner with local developers to complete projects quickly. The realty firm wants to divide its 42 acres on Old Mahabalipuram Road off Chennai into four or five portions, each of which will be handed over to local developers for building residential apartments. “We don’t know much about the Chennai market and think it’s a good idea to bring in people who have the knowledge,” said Anand Reddy, director of PBEL Property, which has a project pipeline mostly in southern India. “Of course, we will keep a portion of the land which we’ll develop ourselves.”

A number of large developers are similarly forming joint ventures (JVs) or special purpose vehicles with smaller, local developers for specific projects on a revenue-sharing model. “We will see more developers getting into such JVs depending on what the local partner brings to the table,” said a senior research analyst at First Global Securities Ltd, who didn’t want to be named. “It could be land, local domain knowledge or even good building capacity.” Mumbai-based developer Sunil Mantri Realty Ltd, for instance, prefers local partners with the potential to speed up projects by procuring building approvals and helping in the conversion of land status quickly—often, the most time-consuming aspects of development. Read More »

Gurgaon Mumbai Emerge as Top Residential Destinations

Gurgaon and Mumbai have emerged as the top destinations for residential investment in the country. Both have seen a massive infusion of commercial and retail space owing to residential demand, which in turn was spurred by a growth in employment opportunities, according to the fourth quarter Asia Pacific Property Digest by global real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSelle. The residential market in both the regions witnessed a price correction of 25-30% from their peak values which presented opportunities to end-users and investors alike.

Despite being hit hard by the recent turmoil, the residential sector of the crisis-torn Indian real estate industry has emerged as the sole bright spot for individual investors, the digest ranked Noida, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata behind Gurgaon and Mumbai. The six cities, which are witnessing an influx of IT/ ITeS employees, also provide residential units at affordable prices. However, infrastructure continues to remain a concern across most of these cities as it is unable to keep pace with the growth in population. With the exception of Bangalore, oversupply will be a concern in the short term due to large number of projects launched over the past 3-4 quarters. Read More »

Mumbai’s Fails to Lure Bidders in Govt Land Sale

Mumbai’s failure to lure any bidders in the first government land sale in at least 1 1/2 years may cause rates in that area to fall as India’s financial hub seeks to develop the reclaimed marshland into a key business district. “It’s a once-in-10 years kind of situation,” Vivek Dahiya, chief executive officer of New Delhi-based GenReal Property Advisors, said by phone from New Delhi. “The Mumbai real estate market is going through a rare situation, where several micro- markets are going to witness over-supply because lots of projects coming up in some areas and demand drying up in some.”

The five likely bidders who attended a preliminary meeting last month for the sale of the site in the city’s Bandra-Kurla Complex didn’t submit offers yesterday, said Dilip Kawathkar, joint project director and spokesman for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. The land was valued at a minimum 4.35 billion rupees ($95 million) by the agency. Read More »

GTC Plot Sold for Rs 591 cr in Mumbai

In a city where open plots have all but disappeared, the last of the vast chunks of land are worth their weight in gold. In yet another big-ticket deal—considered to be the largest in over two years — Mumbai-based company Sheth Developers is learnt to have bought the GTC (Golden Tobacco Company) property in Vile Parle for Rs 591 crore. The deal overshadows last month’s agreement by the Wadhwa Group with Hindustan Composites Ltd (HCL) to buy an 18.18-acre Ghatkopar for Rs 571 crore.

According to people familiar with the deal, the Vile Parle land—spread over 57,000 square metres or approximately 14 acres—is located in a prime area next to Mithibai College and touching S V Road. On paper, the transaction is shown as a joint development between the builder and the Sanjay Dalmia-led GTC. Those in the know say that Sheth Developers will construct on 10% of the land and hand it over to GTC free of cost as part of the deal. The location is ideal for a high-end residential enclave on the lines of the builder’s Beau Monde towers at Prabhadevi. The property has been in the market for several years; one of the other contenders for it was reportedly D B Realty. Read More »

Mumbai Top Real Estate Destinations in Terms of Price Escalation

Property-seekers might think Delhi-NCR has the maximum appreciation potential within a year’s time. However, according to the latest property index released by real estate portal Makaan.com, it’s the Mumbai real estate market which beat all Indian cities in terms of price escalation over a period of 12 months. Mumbai has bucked the economic slowdown by witnessing a whopping 24.7 per cent jump in prices between January and December 2009. During the same period, realty rates in Delhi-NCR rose by 8.8 per cent.

But other emerging residential destinations such as Hyderabad and Bangalore have witnessed a fall of 7.7 and 2.2 per cent, respectively, the index added. However, Pune market gained significantly by 9.9 per cent. The survey revealed that all these five cities — Delhi- NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore — witnessed a drop in property prices in the first six months — January to June — due to slump in the market. But the subsequent gain came following the launch of various affordable units. These units have now achieved premium value across India. Read More »

Investors Leaving Mumbai-Gujarat Emerging as More Preferable Destination

Hardik Shah, who deals in real estate in Vapi town of south Gujarat, is a busy man these days. Vapi has been a favourite location for industrialists from Mumbai who want to set up plants in Gujarat because they find the state more investor friendly. On Wednesday, he was with a client near Sanjan trying to identify land for a medium-sized petrochemical unit. “Of late, inquiries from Mumbai have increased substantially for suitable land near Maharashtra’s border with Gujarat. These people are upset with parochialism in and around Mumbai,” says Shah.

Obviously, Amitabh Bachchan is not the only Mumbaikar who is rooting for Gujarat. The shrill tone of ‘Amchi Mumbai’ is driving investments towards Gujarat. S Sukeja, director of a firm which makes cranes, says, “Though we are based in Mumbai and we had planned some expansion in Thane, we have now decided to relocate the new unit to Gujarat.” This, according to government officials, has pushed up realty prices by at least 10 to 15 per cent in just the last two weeks. “Normally, realty deals in Gujarat take place only after Uttarayan. But the trouble in Mumbai has only spurred interest here,” a collector of a south Gujarat district told TOI. Read More »

RLDA Makes 4th Attempt to Sell Prime Land at Commercial Hub in Mumbai

A parcel of land close to the Bandra-Kurla commercial hub in Mumbai has been put up for sale again by the Railway Land Development Authority (RLDA). The reserve price of the 45,371-square-metre plot was last pegged at Rs 3,960 crore. This is the fourth attempt by RLDA, the nodal agency for development of railway land in the country, to sell the land. It has invited expressions of interest (EoIs) from companies to develop the prime land. The last date for receiving EoIs is February 28, after which a new reserve price will be announced. The land authority had put the auctioning on hold earlier as the deputy commissioner of the area claimed part ownership of the land. “The dispute with local authorities had been partly solved. We hope to resolve it completely soon,” said a senior official from RLDA.

In its previous attempt to sell the land in 2008, RLDA had cut the reserve price of the plot by nearly 14 per cent to the current Rs 3,960 crore. It also reduced the minimum networth requirement by similar margins in a bid to perk up the interest of bidders. Though developers such as DLF, Unitech, Parsvnath and Indiabulls expressed interest in the project, they backed out as the reserve price was considered too high given the slowdown in the real estate. Earlier, the authority had more than trebled the reserve price of the plot to Rs 4,628 crore, on the grounds that extra development could be done on the land due to relaxed norms. The state government had increased the floor space index to 4 and a developer could build up to 150,000 sq metres, or 1.6 million sq ft, of space. Read More »

Real Estate Mumbai Firms Ride High on SC’s ‘forest land’ Ruling

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the “forest land” matter has triggered a frenetic activity in the realty sector in some of the Mumbai’s prominent suburbs. Though the interim ruling on January 13 does not allow resuming construction, developers and even residents’ association are confident that the SC relief is a step towards regularisation of all “illegal” properties on about 250 acres, spread in suburbs of Mulund, Thane, Nahur and Bhandup.

Some developers, with around 45 major residential projects at stake, have interpreted the interim ruling as a green light to resume construction. But, Debi Goenka of the Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG), which had filed the original petition in the Bombay High Court in 2001 against commercial exploitation of forest land, warns the developers against this interpretation. “If the developers interpret the ruling that way, then god help them. The SC has not vacated the stay imposed by the Bombay HC on construction activity,” Mr Goenka said. Read More »

Further Decline in Office Space Rentals at Nariman Point

The micro-market of Nariman Point was among the few in the country where office space rentals fell over the last quarter in an otherwise stabilising commercial real estate market. According to a report by commercial real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis, this is primarily due to relocation of offices from Nariman Point to further north of Mumbai. Rentals of grade A offices in the Central Business District (CBD) of Nariman Point, Fort and Cuffe Parade fell from Rs 300/sq ft to Rs 290/sq ft a month while those in grade B offices fell from Rs 225/sq ft to Rs 210/sq ft a month. The overall rentals in the area decreased by three per cent over the last three months of 2009. “The Central Business District (CBD) of Nariman Point continued to witness pressure on absorption on account of tenants relocating or evaluating potential relocation to the Extended and Alternate Business Districts,” the report says.

Some of the major offices that have recently vacated more than 1 lakh sq ft of office space in Nariman Point include JP Morgan that has shifted to Kalina and Hindustan Unilever that has moved to Andheri. As a result, grade A office space in Nariman Point, which had a high vacancy rate of 10 per cent in September last year, has now registered a higher vacancy rate of 18 per cent. Read More »