Cities see boom in sales of luxurious housing

Cities see boom in sales of luxurious housing
Business Standard, January 14, 2010, Page 4

Raghavendra Kamath / Mumbai

DLF sold apartments worth Rs 1,000 crore in December

The country’s largest real estate developer, DLF, sold apartments worth Rs 1,000 crore in December. This is the highest monthly sale the company has recorded in its history.

There are many developers like DLF who have seen a surge in the sale of apartments across the country in the quarter ended December, especially in the luxury and semi-luxury category.

A large chunk of DLF’s sales are also from the luxury and semi-luxury segments. It sold 76 apartments of Rs 5 crore each in The Magnolias, Gurgaon, netting nearly Rs 400 crore. The project has apartments of 5,825 sq ft each and duplexes and penthouses of 9,000 to 10,000 sq ft each.

It made another Rs 200-300 crore each in its relaunched projects, DLF Belaire and Park Place, in Gurgaon. Belaire had a price of Rs 2-3 crore each and Park Place of Rs 1.25-1.5 crore.

Indiabulls Real Estate has sold 100 apartments in its 65-storey ‘Indiabulls Sky’ in the Lower Parel area of Mumbai in the past four months. It has also recently launched Indiabulls Sky Suites with full-age advertisements, promising ‘A head in the clouds experience’’. While, apartments in Sky were priced at Rs 6.75-22.5 crore, depending on the size, Sky Suites are expected to be higher.

Indiabulls is also working on a super-luxury, ‘By invitation only’, Indiabulls Sky Forest, where homes are more than 10,000 sq ft each and priced 10-20 per cent higher than Sky projects.

Buoyed by response for its premium housing projects, Orbit Corporation, another Mumbai-based developer, says it will launch one luxury project in the city every quarter. Orbit has sold off its first lot of 18 flats in Orbit Terraces — a premium housing project in the Lower Parel area where apartments ranged from Rs 3.3 crore to Rs 6.6 crore — within 17 days of its launch in September. It sold another dozen flats in the same building later.

Orbit earlier sold its Orbit Arya project in South Mumbai, where apartments were priced at Rs 10-15 crore, within a month.

The increasing sales are a result of many factors, besides general economic recovery. “A host of reasons have helped property sales. Interest rates are down, property prices are down 30 per cent from the peak and markets are doing well. All these are giving confidence to buyers to buy premium homes,” says Rajeev Talwar, executive director, DLF.

Agrees Raminder Grover, chief executive of Homebay Residential, part of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj: “Post slowdown, this segment has clearly picked up and we must have marketed and sold 60-70 of homes of Rs 5 crore and above.”

Developers are cashing on this demand by offering even more expensive and exclusive apartments. For instance, Pune-based Kumar Builders is planning to build ‘sky villas’ in the Worli area of Mumbai, where the first villa will start from the twelfth floor. Called Kumar Couture, it will overlook the Bandra-Worli Sea Link and will be priced at Rs 30 crore each, for about 8,000 sq ft.

Beyond Delhi and Mumbai

In Hyderabad, Dax Properties Pvt Ltd (part of Countryside Realtors Pvt Ltd) has sold 65 to 70 villas in its Golf Retreat Project since the launch last month. Costing Rs 1.2-2.5 crore each, they vary from 500 sq yards to 2,000 sq yards.

“There are takers from all over the country,’’ says Hassan, managing director of Dax. Another developer, Aditya Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation, has sold 20 villas out of 30 at Empress Park in the Jubilee Hills area of Hyderabad. Each villa costs Rs 3.5 crore.

A few days earlier, Aditya Housing announced Mount Castle at Nandagiri Hills in the city, where each floor was occupied by a single flat. Of the 24 it plans to develop, it has already sold five.

In Pune, Kumar Builders sold 77 flats within a short span of time in its premium project, 45 Nirvana Hills, where apartments are priced above Rs 1 crore. The company plans to launch two or three luxury housing projects — flats, bungalows and row houses — in prime localities like Kalyani Nagar and Hadapsar.

Bangalore is also likely to see more luxury projects in the category of Rs 4 crore-plus by developers such as Prestige and Nitesh Estates, as developers have seen good response for the premium products in the past three months.

(With additional reporting by B Krishna Mohan & Pravda Godbole)