After a long hiatus, home sales are finally back on track. Sales of major real estate developers have more than trebled in the June quarter compared to the preceding three months, amid growing expectations that the good times will continue to roll.
This upturn comes soon after an earlier stalling of demand. In February, DLF, the country's largest property developer, said it had stalled construction on 16 million sq ft of commercial space (retail and office) due to lack of demand. So, too, with other developers like Unitech, Parsvnath and Raheja, who either stalled or slowed the construction of their commercial properties because of a demand-supply mismatch.
Property developers plan more launches in the sub-Rs 20 lakh category of homes, after Monday's Budget concession.
Want to appoint CFO, advisory board and governance committee.
Third attempt to get more buyers, property market still quite depressed.
The government-owned hospitality chain, which lost almost all of its duty-free shops (barring two) to others as a result of the competitive bidding in the last couple of years, intends to regain its market share - at least marginally- in the next one year.
Patience, however, ran out for over a dozen global brands, including GAS, Replay, Etam and Argos. All of them have ended their joint ventures or franchisee arrangements with Indian retailers in the last one year due to reasons ranging from poor sales and high rentals to mounting losses and failure to open stores on time.
The $6.3-billion Mahindra Group expects to grow revenues from its agri-business venture nearly eight-fold in the next five years by expanding among national and overseas retail chains, a top group official said.
After commercial districts, residential markets and malls, fast-food chains like McDonald's, Barista Coffee and Nirula's have now trained their guns on highways. With the improved road network, brand-conscious Indians have begun to travel like never before.
Currently, the company is in the process of demolishing the old buildings and is expected to start construction work on the mill land by the year-end, a top company official said. The company plans to build a hotel and a commercial complex for IT and ITeS (IT-enabled Services) companies on the 20-acre land.
They have graduated from just home delivery to SMS marketing, bulk buying alliances and credit extensions.
Consider this: Kishore Biyani's Future Group, which owns the country's largest retailer Pantaloon, is converting the standalone stores of book and music chain Depot into shop-in-shops within Big Bazaar. While the number of Depot shop-in-shops has risen to 123, that of standalone stores has come down to nine. Same with UK-based footwear brand Lee Cooper.
With the monsoon season to begin and hotels hoping for a robust business at leisure destinations, swine flu could play spoilsport for the hotels, said industry players. At leisure destinations, international tourists form around 35 per cent of the clientele, with around 20-25 per cent coming from the US alone. Last year, tourist arrival in the country was 5.37 million, a fifth of whom stayed in five star hotels.
Whether it would help these cash-starved firms to improve their profit margins is yet to be seen, but such a move would send a strong signal that the phase of price correction is over. "Developers want to send signals that they are good. But if they are increasing above 10-15 per cent, it would be irrational," said Sanjay Dutt, chief executive of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, a property consultant.
Tata Housing, a unit of Tata Sons, is advancing its plans to build 15,000 low-cost dwelling units by two years. Besides, it should add 300 more houses in its Mumbai project to take the advantage of demand for such homes, a top company official said.Tata Housing had earlier planned to develop 1,000 houses under the brand 'Shubh Griha' in Bhoisar, a distant suburb of Mumbai, priced at Rs 3.9-6.7 lakh.
Real estate companies are now going to the other extreme and falling over each other to offer affordable housing at a price range of Rs 500,000 to Rs 50 lakhs (Rs 5 million). The varied pricing is a function of affordability being a relative term, depending on the location. For instance, a Rs 50- lakh (Rs 5-million) apartment in Mumbai is considered affordable housing. In a city like Nagpur, the same price will qualify for premium housing.
While the sudden rise in demand for affordable residential housing in the last couple of months has given the much-needed relief to real estate developers, commercial and retail segments continue to face the heat of oversupply, combined with declining rental rates and lower demand from investors.
With confidence creeping back into the market place and rentals down up to 50 per cent, large retailers are back to drawing up aggressive growth plans. In the next one year, Aditya Birla Retail, Bharti Enterprises, Reliance Retail, Trent, Mahindra Retail and others hope to open new stores spread over five million square feet.
Speculators often leveraged volume discounts on property purchases to re-sell them at prices lower than those available to individual buyers. This created problems for realtors when demand slowed, since it put pressure on them to take a hit on margins and lower prices still further. The lock-ins are expected to be introduced mostly for mid-income projects that offer prices 20 to 30 per cent below the market and, therefore, attract more undercutting from bulk discount buyers.
DLF, Unitech, HDIL & Puravankara line up 60 million square feet of new launches. This is more than double the sales bookings in the past financial year.
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