Saturday, July 17, 2010

Yelahanka is the new Gurgaon

Back in 2001 I visited a farmhouse of on the outskirts of Bangalore in a god-forsake place called Yelahanka. The ORR was new laid out and devoid of traffic and any construction on either side of the road. Rewind forward to 2010 and a completely new Bangalore has taken shape. Already land prices in Devanhalli have reached meteoric proportions and Yelahanka has zoomed along with it.

The real estate hype masters tout Infosys and Wipro everywhere they want land prices to jump. Infosys is touted in Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Mohali, Sarjapur road (bangalore) and now Devanhalli. I guess we will see an Infy campus before 2020 however by then Infosys would be 500k strong so the 12000 people would make no sense :)

Another point of note which the author failed to notice is that Infosys is proposing to spend 710 crores to house 12,000 people however Wipro will spend 477 crores for 15,000 people. It looks as if Infosys comes out to be dumber then Wipro specially when it comes to calculating ratios, or it appears that the writer is a complete moron, and this time from Indian Express.

>> Indian Express reports
Where the six-lane highway from Bangalore city to the international airport in Devanahalli branches off to the left into Doddaballapur Road, a hoarding proclaims: “Yelahanka is the new Gurgaon”.

Put up by a residential builder, it is a defining marker in the growth curve of Yelahanka, a suburb 15 km north of the city that was envisaged as a satellite town but is now under the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Proximity to the new airport — 20 km away — has given wings to aspirations in the once sleepy town that has seen a property boom in the last five-six years.

With the Karnataka Assembly passing a Bill last Thursday to set up a 10,000-acre Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) north of Devanahalli, analysts say real estate in Yelahanka is all set to rain returns in a few years.

V Madhu, Principal Secretary, Infrastructure Development Department of Karnataka, says the entire Hebbal-Yelahanka-Devanahalli stretch will see “substantial development” in the coming years, fuelled by a mega project around the airport encompassing an aerospace park, a financial district and the IT park, where, among others, Infosys has proposed to invest Rs 710 crore in a 12,000-seat software development centre and Wipro is set to develop a Rs 477-crore centre employing 15,000.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Property price surge across metros

Article Link

Property prices across the metros are soaring. In key markets, residential property prices are well past the 2007 peaks. Even land deal valuations have skyrocketed, report CNBC-TV18’s Vivek Law and Shubhro Sen.

Prices here have soared more than 40% since 2009. The national capital region is not far behind, with the price increase well over 30%. Bangalore too has seen a price rise of 10-15% in the first half of FY11.

That's not all, land prices have spooked analysts who have begun indicating that a property bubble is gradually building in cities like Mumbai and NCR. In what is being touted as the largest auction, Mumbai based Lodha Developers bagged a Rs 5700 crore deal recently. Several auctions by national textile corporation are being rescheduled as the company is re-considering an increase in reserve prices

Pranay Vakil, Chairman, Knight Frank India said, “People are buying land for the price of finished product, which surprises all of us and no amount of calculation can justify the price that some of them are paying.”

Monday, July 12, 2010

South Mumbai bungalow to go for Rs500 cr

The party is on. Keep playing the music as everyone is in a drunken stupor.

Just by the numbers.

Mumbai's population : 2,00,000,00 people
Next year ** projections ** of sale of luxury apartments : 7,000 flats
Ratio 7000/2,00,000,00 = 0.035%
Looks like someone has a vested interest in reporting local news affecting 0.035% of the population.

DNA India reports

Orbit, which owns 50% stake in the property — 25% purchased on its own and 25% through Om Builders — is negotiating for the balance 50% stake with the other family members (about 70-80 signatories) of the well-known philanthropic Kilachand family. Spread across 9,000 sq mt, the spacious bungalow is expected to cost Orbit roughly Rs500 crore.

The Mumbai developer, known for its upscale residential projects, is in the final lap of raising Rs350 crore from a private equity fund for the project. Acknowledging the move, Pujit Aggarwal, managing director of Orbit Corporation, said the bungalow is strategically located on Napeansea Road where flat prices are over Rs40,000-Rs50,000 a sq ft.

According to Aggarwal, his company is also in talks to purchase three other plots on Napean Sea Road for its first block redevelopment project in the tony neighbourhood. The three sea-facing plots will be consolidated for a luxury housing project, generating 300,000 sq ft of saleable area.

Acquiring dilapidated properties and redeveloping them is the only way to build new projects in areas such as south and central Mumbai, due to a paucity of open land there.

According to Knight Frank, a global property advisory, while there is a potential problem of supply overhang of luxury projects in central Mumbai areas such as Lower Parel, there is huge demand for such high-end residential developments in south Mumbai because supply is restricted. Incidentally, consultants have estimated that around 7,000 luxury apartments will be sold within a year in Mumbai, with each unit priced at more than Rs4.7 crore.