At the heart of the matter are revenue-share rental agreements that retailers are mooting over fixed-rent contracts that they say are unsustainable, given the revenue loss they've suffered during the lockdown.
Urban planners and real estate experts say bad town planning in Mumbai and rising deaths during the ongoing pandemic are a "sad reality". Dev Chatterjee and Raghavendra Kamath report.
India's biggest firm, Reliance Industries, has decided to cut salaries by 10 per cent in its oil and refining divisions. Several smaller companies like Kajaria Ceramics have followed suit with cuts as high as 40 per cent for those earning more than Rs 50 lakh.
Developers are cautious about the timing of launches in the near term, given the relative uncertainty in demand pick-up and logistical challenges during the lockdown. However, affordable housing projects slated for the first quarter (Q1) of 2020-21 (FY21) may get launched this quarter itself.
Several on-site labourers in the city want to take special trains being run to transport workers back home. The rising number of COVID-19 cases in the city has caused anxiety among them.
Experts say that the lockdown and its aftermath will further quicken the consolidation in the real estate sector, which has been taking place since 2012, with more small players going out of the business and bigger, branded players dominating the market.
'High-value homes are designed and built on slum lands and slums are given residue. They do not have access to free air and live in close proximity of others.'
CREDAI-MCHI, a body of developers in Mumbai, has pegged the drop in sales booking at around 80 per cent in the February-March period this year. This is the second highest fall in residential sales in the past five years, after Q1, 2017, when the decline, due to the note ban, was 37 per cent.
The analyst said since servicing of principal and interest on loans will beome challenging for mall operatos in the next couple of months.
Retailers and multiplex operators want mall owners to either forgo rent for the period of the shutdown or lower rent in the event the mall is open but footfalls are low.
Employees asked to work from home... cancelled travel plans... curtailed meetings... Caution and precaution dominate Corporate India's response to Covid-19.
Experts feel that mall owners anticipate an increase in costs to the tune of 15-20 per cent annually, prompting a mixed response to the '24 hours' initiative. A mall owner said while the policy is good in spirit, implementing it would be a challenge as night shopping or eating out wasn't a habit in Mumbai yet.
Almost all the big mall developers/investors - such as Raheja-owned Inorbit Malls, Xander-APG joint venture Virtuous Retail South Asia (VRSA), property developer Prestige Estates Projects, and Blackstone-owned Nexus Malls - are looking to double their space in a year or two.
CPPIB, which started investing in the country in 2009, has invested in Kotak Mahindra Bank, L&T Infrastructure Development Projects, online education firm Byju's, energy company ReNew Power, logistics firm Delhivery, among others.
'After that, volumes and prices would move up.'
Whether it is DLF in the National Capital Region, or Godrej Properties and Oberoi Realty in Mumbai or Sunteck Realty, Prestige Estates and Sobha Realty in Bengaluru, most top players have launched or lined up a slew of new project launches during this season.
Analysts say that PMC Bank case is only going to make matters worse for HDIL and the Wadhawans.
While Waryam Singh was a non-executive director at HDIL, he is listed as one of the promoters of the company and had relations, including shareholding, with several other entities controlled by the Wadhawans, the HDIL founders.
Goldman-HDFC JV and OYO Hotels & Homes are betting big on student housing, says Raghavendra Kamath.
The plot C-65 in the G Block of Bandra Kurla Complex was leased to Goisu Realty (a unit of Sumitomo) for 80 years by MMRDA.