The end user should look for a reliable name, location and book a unit in a project while it is being launched. This way one manages to save money while there is clarity in the property documentation process.

Real estate is the new sinkhole for a large portion of unaccounted money,being put into the market. And this is one reason why there will be no recession here, India can rest easy!

Development of new connectivity can add immense value to an area. It not only provides opportunity to the developers to do more business but it also provides new options to end users. Best of all, it helps in containing the price rise of real estate in the main districts of a town.

The newly built bridge over Hindon river near sectors 121 and 119 in noida has reduced the distance of Greater Noida Sectors 1 and 4 from main noida to almost half. Because of the bridge, noida’s connectivity has improved so much that the new area is termed as noida extension. Since then a number of developers in the area have launched apartments in the price range of Rs 9 lakh for 1BHK apartment to Rs 15 lakh for a 2BHK and Rs18 lakh for 3 BHK.

The distance of sector 1 and sector 4 of greator noida, where a number of townships are being developed, has reduced to about 11km from main market place, sector 18 in noida, because of the bridge. Earlier, the distance from sector 18 to the place was around 18km. The distance from main commercial centers like sectors 61 and sectors 62 too has come down to around 8km from the earlier 14km.

The new bridge has also added value to Crossings Republik, a township on around 350 acres of land being developed by a consortium of around 10 developers. In this township, a number of projects are near completion and possessions are likely to be given to the buyers in the next couple of months.

Before the construction of this bridge, one had to travel to reach areas via NH 24. Not only is the distance via NH 24 longer, but NH 24 also remains congested most of the time, and as a result homebuyers were reluctant to purchase these apartments in these areas.

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is planning to expand NH 24 to six lanes, which will further improve the connectivity to the trans- Hindon area. But the implementation will take time.

The new bridge on Hindon has come up on a 130 meter-wide connectivity road from South Delhi via a bridge over Yamuna at Kalindi Kunj.

If this road is completed and NH 24 is six laned, the connectivity to this whole area to delhi and Ghaziabad will further improve. The Crossings Republik, which is also just across the river, will be hugely benefited because  of this new connectivity.

“We must have laid off some employees somewhere,” DLF Chairman K P Singh told reporters on the sidelines of India Economic Summit, but did not give the number of jobs that were cut.

The company has also deferred some of its projects due to poor demand. “In hotels, residential and commercial everywhere…deferred because of lower demand and liquidity crisis,” he said, again without sharing the specifics.

Singh also said high interest rates have taken a toll on demand. “There are no takers for housing sector… Ideally, the interest rate should be around 7%.”

Asked if the current prices of the realty projects are inflationary, Singh denied and said: “It cannot be inflationary as it has to be competitive. It also depends on supply and demand.”

Because of demand going down, many projects have been closed down by many developers across the country, he added.

The board has also approved the fixed deposit scheme of the company for the year 2008-2009.

DS Kulkarni Developers is a real estate developer. It was incorporated on Sept. 20, 1991. The company has developed real estate projects in and around Pune and Mumbai.

Shares of the company declined Rs 4.6, or 6.79%, to end at Rs 63. The total volume of shares traded was 8,020 at the BSE (Friday).

From luxury to leisure, real estate companies such as Brigade group, Omaxe Ltd, Prestige group, Sobha Developers Ltd and Value Design build Pvt. Ltd, are entering into the leisure segment to build health resorts and spas in the backwaters of Kerala or amid the plantations of Chikmagalur in Karnataka.
Mr. Vineet Varma, chief executive officer, Brigade Hospitality Services Pvt. Ltd said, “The huge demand and scope of business in the leisure and hospitality segment are the major drivers for builders like us to get into this vertical,” Brigade Hospitality Services Pvt. Ltd is a fully owned subsidiary of Bangalore-based Brigade group. “Also, there’s only so much you can do in the residential and commercial sectors and new verticals like these complete our portfolio.”
Brigade group is coming up with a Rs100 crore premium health spa resort in the quiet coffee plantations of Chikmagalur, about a four-hour drive from Bangalore.
While the group will develop the property, it has teamed up with Singapore-based hospitality brands Banyan Tree and Angsana to operate it.
The leisure segment has attracted not just top-of-the-line developers but also new entrants.
Value Designbuild, a five-year-old real estate company based in Bangalore, is also set to develop a spa along with leisure homes.
Another Bangalore company, Sobha Developers Ltd, has a full-fledged Ayurvedic spa offering the traditional Kerala Ayurvedic massages, herbal baths in its first integrated township Sobha City in Thrissur in Kerala.
“Tier II or smaller cities offer a lot of variety for real estate development and we want to capitalize on the growing demands for our consumers. With the middle class getting richer, it is imperative to give them choices with projects like these,” says J.C. Sharma, executive director of Sobha Developers.

TEA additional CEO C S Verma said that the authority will complete the process of acquisition of 7500 acres in a quarter, following which it will be allotted to DLF and Jaypee group. He said, “We are negotiating with farmers and should be able to finalize the acquisition rate in the first week of July. Once the rate is finalized, it wouldn’t take us long to acquire the land”.

TEA will transfer the land to realty developers at acquisition cost from the farmers, which is likely to be much cheaper than the market rate developers have been paying privately. The ability to buy large tract of land at a cheaper price without spending much time and energy in the process is what is driving realty players to TEA’s Special Development Zone scheme. As realty sector boomed in the past few years, land prices too surged and farmers became more demanding while negotiating a rate with developers.

Most importantly, with government shifting the onus of land acquisition on to the developers for the special economic zones (SEZ), the hardship in land acquisition increased manifold. Developers needed to acquire contiguous piece of land from farmers at market rate, which shifted the balance in favour of farmers. Therefore, developers had to commit more men, time and money in land acquisition making the entire project more expensive. DLF hasn’t yet been able to acquire the land for its 5000 acres multi-product SEZ in Haryana, according to a company spokesperson.

Unlike SEZ, special development zone does not offer any tax benefit, but offers land at a much cheaper rate and without much loss of time. SDZ scheme requires the developer to allocate 35% of its total land to a core activity, which could range from industrial activity to sport and institutional.

IT/ITeS will form DLF’s core activity, while Jaypee’s will be sport. Jaypee plans to build Formula One race course in its SDZ. Jaypee, which is building Taj Expressway, says its proposed SDZ has a synergy with company’s other projects. Jaypee has other real estate projects in Greater Noida and around the expressway and is also a contender for building the proposed airport at Jewar, 40 kilometer from Greater Noida.

Aniruddha Joshi, executive director, Hirco Group, concurs, “The real estate sector is expanding beyond the basic bricks and mortar. Demand for real estate in growing segments like retail, hospitality, healthcare, biotech, ITES, etc, is driving the sector. In the same way, SEZs (Special Economic Zones), townships, and IT parks have created demand for skills beyond just the conventional fields of architecture, and civil and electrical engineering, to specialised knowledge on infrastructure and urban planning. People with specialisations in environmental aspects are also preferred as developers and consumers become increasingly aware of ‘green’ issues.”

Since India eased rules on inward investment in the construction industry in early 2005, foreign investors have earmarked an estimated $20 billion for the booming property market. But government figures show only about $2 billion has actually been spent in the last three years.

Funds used to complain that Indian developers slapped inflated price tags on themselves, their land, and projects.

But a fall in company valuations, and prospects of a drop in overheated land prices, has cheered private equity investors while making life tougher for developers.

Mr. Parry Singh, managing director of Red Fort Capital, which runs a $300 million fund that includes sovereign wealth fund money, said, “It’s brutal”.

A senior DLF official said, “We are preparing an elaborate plan to develop slum areas in Delhi. We have received a very positive response from chief minister Sheila Dixit about it. We will shortly submit the proposal to the government”. He didn’t give details as the proposal is yet to be finalised, but said the project “is going to be big”. A DLF spokesperson, however, denied that the company is working on any such project.
As in Mumbai, where more than half the population live in slums, Delhi, too, houses a sizeable chunk of its population in these run-down places. According to Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), nearly 30 lakh people (over 20%) live in slums. The city has 900-odd slum clusters, commonly referred to as jhuggis.

Bhumiheen camp and Navjivan camp at South Delhi’s Kalkaji, housing around 8,000 families each, are the bigger ones. Areas like Okhla, Mayapuri, Wazirpur Shadipur and the Trans-Yamuna, too, are home to hundreds of slums. There is no government estimate available on the area these slums occupy.

Delhi hasn’t seen any great initiative by private developers in the past for slum development. A senior MCD official blames the state government for not giving the developers the go-ahead. But now the government seems to be showing interest. And there are many incentives for developers to take the plunge.

The whole process works like this. A developer identifies a slum for the redevelopment project and approaches the government with a proposal. Once it gets government nod, the developer is expected to obtain the consent of slum dwellers. (In Mumbai, at least 65% of slum-dwellers must agree for a project to take off.). The developer is expected to provide a new dwelling unit to existing residents in the proposed apartments.

Access to cheap land gives developers a high margin. Some Mumbai-based real estate firms like Akruti City, HDIL and Orbit have made big bucks by banking on these projects. According to Mr Dutt, the return for a developer on a slum project could be as high as 80%, compared to 35-40% in ordinary projects.

The fallout of the rise in input costs for the housing and real estate sectors has led to massive escalation of costs badly hitting the demand among the middle class and upper middle class strata. The situation has become worse for the lower strata of society.

The real estate market is in a tizzy with demand for housing witnessing a sudden drop and the developers caught in a dilemma whether to revise the property prices or wait for things to stabilise.

Vineet Manchanda, Managing Director of Delhi-based Manchanda and Manchanda Builders, said the rising inflationary trend has resulted in prices going up for all commodities. This has adversely affected the buying power of the common man.

“In the field of real estate, the increase in the prices of the raw materials has impacted both the developers as well as the real users and the situation looks pretty disturbing,” he added.

The property show, explained by the company as a “Premium real estate event” is billed as one of the biggest shows for developers interested in selling and buying prime properties in Goa.
Addressing a press conference, at the historic Azad Maidan, in the city, on 07th march, Mr Rodricks said, “I am alarmed and concerned, and implore and beg to Goan developers not to sell the land for money but to undertake development which would support progress of the tourism sector.”

Mr Rodricks further said that the government needs to take steps and position as to what  the unique selling point (USP) of Goa, is?. “The government has to take a stand as regards the people who are coming here and trying to kill the main ingredient (read as identity),” he said, adding “which would result in properties coming up on green hills.”

Aaround 60 developers have been invited to participate in the “Sell Goa” fair, Mr Rodricks said, “This is our land and someone else is selling it.