Real Estate Gurgaon

A headline in the newspaper reads: “Mass Rapid Transit system (MRTS) to link Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar”. Another reads: “A new airport planned at Noida/Greater Noida, Panvel at Mumbai, SEZ being planned at Navi Mumbai”. These snippets may seem arbitrary to readers.

But if you collect those bits and pieces, and do a veracity check, you could get the pulse on residential property trends. Trying to guess where property prices are heading is a tough one. But if know what development is taking place in one’s region — may be a new railway station, airport, SEZ a few kilometres away — one could get a clue as to where property prices are headed.

Delhi & NCR Region

For instance, in the Delhi and NCR region, Gurgaon is likely to see a lot of action. Gurgaon residential properties prices have shot up by 44% in the past six months ended September ‘06. According to reports, around eight special economic zones (SEZs) are coming up in Gurgaon. SEZs have mandates to develop residential zones and hence, improve the overall infrastructure quality in their vicinity.

Gurgaon, located towards the South of Delhi, has National Highway 8 running through it, ensuring good connectivity. Its proximity to the existing airport is an advantage. As per property consultant Trammell Crow Meghraj, Gurgaon is expected to see new supply hitting the market in the next 11-14 months.

With little land available for development in Delhi, over the years, Gurgaon and Noida have acted as viable suburbs for owning inexpensive real estate. The introduction of Metro railway in Delhi has, to a large extent, solved intra-city transportation problems. In case of Noida, the future triggers could be the completion of a proposed airport.

Greater Noida has advantages of better connectivity, power and water supply. But the region is also witnessing lesser occupancy as many buyers are buying property for investment purposes. Moreover, the Commonwealth Games ’10, to be held in the east of Delhi, is leading to a lot of action in the hospitality segment. Indirapuram and Dwarka have also seen a lot of action.

Source: //indiatimes.com

The reality of non-metro cities – Tier II and Tier III cities in corporate jargon –like Pune, Mysore, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Coimbatore and Jaipur, fast emerging as the new IT hotspots is dawning on IT and BPO majors sooner than expected. For, these cities are witnessing a surge in infrastructure development—telecom, power, construction, facility management, transportation, catering and other services. And, they are on the radar screens of IT majors like Wipro, Infosys, TCS, HCL Technologies and Satyam, who have already set up or are planning to build large IT campuses.

These new cities, says Sunil Mehta, vice-president, Nasscom, are fulfilling the requirements that IT companies look for when deciding on expansion, namely availability and costs of labour and real estate, business environment as well as physical and social infrastructure. Consider this. Software exports from these cities have shown a dramatic increase from a mere 5% a couple of years ago to 15-18% at present.

They are now set to go up to 25-30% by 2010. Bullish on their prospects, the world’s leading real estate consultancy firm, Jones Lang LaSalle, projects that a couple of them could mature into major centres over the next five years.

“These new IT hotspots are expected to employ 30% of the projected strength of 850,000 IT professionals and 1.4 million ITeS-BPO professionals by 2010,” estimates Mehta.

The offshore IT and BPO industries directly employ around 700,000 professionals and provide indirect employment to approximately 2.5 million workers.

Mehta cites a balanced regional development, in addition to all round infrastructure development, as key benefits of this fast-growing trend. Besides, these cities have built primary infrastructure that has fostered several IT centres. On their part, the respective states have pitched in by providing various sops and a regulatory environment.

Source : //financialexpress.com

After building the $8.5 million Gold Souk in Gurgaon and several such speciality malls in other cities, Aeren R. Enterprises is constructing a $85 million 'festival city' in Punjab.

A leading real estate india company, Aeren R.'s festival city will have a mix of specialty malls, a multiplex, an Imax theatre, food courts and entertainment zones spread over two million sq. ft. on the Grand Trunk road on the National Highway 1.

'It will be the ultimate destination mall in Punjab with India's biggest indoor entertainment park and a six screen multiplex,' Rajesh J. Aeren, vice chairman of Aeren R. Enterprises, told IANS in an interview.

'We chose Punjab as it is a prosperous state in India with an average compounded growth of 10 percent per annum. Since Ludhiana is among the top cities of Punjab, we thought it was the best choice,' Aeren added.

Today, 40 per cent of the malls are concentrated in the smaller cities where the organised retailing is growing at a 50-60 percent compared to 35-40 percent in large cities, says a study by the India Brand Equity Fund (IBEF).

Aeren R.'s project has been designed by the Britain's RTKL Associates, one of the world's top architectural firms, company officials said.

'Such a project has not been conceptualised in India so it had to be awarded to an experienced architect who has had the expertise of designing such malls in Europe, America, Japan, China, Malaysia,' Aeren added.

Company officials said more than 70 percent of the retail space for the Ludhiana project has already leased out to renowned brands like Shopper's Stop, Reebok, Pantaloon, Levis Strauss and Adidas.

Source://indiaenews.com

Unitech Ltd., India's most-valuable listed real estate firm, expects strong revenue and earnings growth as it doubles construction of houses and offices every year for the next four to five years.

"That's the kind of growth we have, because we are in multiple markets now," said managing director Sanjay Chandra.

"A few years ago we were just a Gurgaon property developer. And we are entering new markets," Chandra told Reuters in an interview. Gurgaon is a suburb of New Delhi.

Unitech, which has a market capitalisation of $7.1 billion, reported a profit of 1.0 billion rupees ($22.3 million) on sales of 3.8 billion rupees for the three months to Sept. 30.

Revenues were set to accelerate as it moved into second-tier cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata, where firms were setting up offices to beat rising costs in major cities, which in turn was creating demand for housing and shopping malls.

Chandra said Unitech expected to meet or beat market estimates for its fiscal third quarter to December 2006.

"Next quarter should be good. The stock market has a lot of expectations from us. Lot of houses are trying to figure out what our numbers will be. We should definitely meet them. Possibly exceed them also," he said, but declined to give specific numbers.

Investment bank UBS expects Unitech to have a compounded average growth rate of 105 percent in sales and 126 percent in earnings over the three fiscal years to March 2009.

Industry estimates show that India's retail real estate market could top $460 billion by 2010, from around $290 billion in 2004.

Chandra said housing, which contributes about 70 percent of the company's revenue, would continue to dominate revenues even as Unitech's developed special economic zones (SEZs) being set up by the government to attract investment and boost exports.

While the revenue impact of the SEZs would be "very big" and "lot of growth" would come from that sector, Chandra said it would be two years before it contributed to cash flows and four years for revenues.

Source : //reuters.com