Navi Mumbai: The rise of planned infrastructure and birth of a city

The satellite city has been flourishing since its inception due to a robust growth in residential, commercial and industrial real estate.

Navi Mumbai was the brainchild of Adi Kanga, a civil engineer. With distinguished architect Charles Correa on board as the Chief Architect, ‘City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO)’ initiated the development of around 16,000 hectares of land to the north-east of Mumbai. Divided into 14 nodes, Navi Mumbai has been flourishing since its inception due to a robust growth in residential, commercial and industrial real estate.

Situated at a distance of 127 kms from Pune along the Mumbai-Pune Express Highway and merely 25 kms from Mumbai, Navi Mumbai is proving to be an attractive growth location for business as well as housing sector. 

The metro-city enjoys smooth connectivity through the routes of rail and road at various destinations like Panvel, Kalamboli, Kharghar and Nerul. Mumbai’s Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport is 30 kms away. With the Navi Mumbai International Airport at Ulwe, near Panvel, expected to be functional by 2020, Navi Mumbai will be the hotbed for an unprecedented growth and development. The flurry in the real estate sector has already been on the rise since the government has approved the plans for the airport and demarcated the land for proposed development under the name of Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area (NAINA). In addition, the Marina will enable travel via hovercraft from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai. 

The Growth Trajectory

i) Apart from the development of the international airport, there is an addition of about 8 million sq. ft of office space to the existing 18 million sq. ft of operational office space.

ii) The south of Navi Mumbai is going to be developed as an environmentally efficient smart city in INR 34,000 crore smart city project announced by CIDCO.

iii) CIDCO-commissioned BKC II, at over 300 acres, is to come up at Kharghar. This will lead to a bustling and thriving ecosystem of jobs, business opportunities, allied service industries, all within the vicinity. 

iv) The Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL), the longest sea bridge in India, of around 22 km will connect Sewri in South Mumbai to Nhava Sheva in Navi Mumbai.

Thanks to these mega projects, Navi Mumbai is now becoming a thriving commercial and industrial hub, seamlessly connected with Mumbai, the commercial capital of India and Pune, the newfound IT hub. IT contributes to more than 40% of all commercial demand and is the main growth story for India.

Real estate in Navi Mumbai is on a high-growth trajectory. One of the large commercial developments by L&T is Seawoods Grand Central Mall which is 1 million sq. ft. in size and managed by international groups like Blackstone. This draws strong comparison to large format malls in Mumbai’s Phoenix Mall in Lower Parel. 

On the residential side, it has a palatable entry price point as of now and has got a plethora of options, including Navi Mumbai’s tallest and first 55 storey skyscraper in a 40-acre mega-township, by Adhiraj Constructions, located near the proposed BKC II.

SOURCE :https://www.hindustantimes.com

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Checking the legality of your property before purchase

Checking the legality of a property before buying is very important as otherwise it can land you in trouble. Apart from zeroing down on a property as per the budget, location and building quality, it’s worthwhile to maintain a check-list of the legal documents to ensure a smooth process of buying a house.

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Once you decide on a property, there are a few steps required to be taken to check its legality.

To help you understand how to know the legal status of a property and the legal documents required to buy a property, Magicbricks is conducting a hangout session with a renowned Bangalore-based lawyer Vatsala Dhananjay, advocate & founder at Shri Vatsala Dhananjay & Company. Join the Hangout to ask your query and to know how to make sure that the property you are buying is legally transparent.

Some of the key topics to be discussed in the session are: 

1. Checking the legalities of a property before the purchase
2. A Khata and B Khata
3. Stamp Duty and Land Tax
4. Valuation fees
5. LegaI property verification process
6. Involvement of local authorities

Source - TOI 

Rupee gains 4 paise against US dollar

MUMBAI: The rupee advanced by four paise to 67.74 against the US dollar in early trade at the Interbank Foreign Exchange on Monday on increased selling of the American currency by exporters and banks.

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Forex dealers said besides fresh foreign capital inflows, a higher opening in the domestic equity markets and dollar's weakness against other currencies overseas supported the domestic unit.

On Friday, the rupee had recovered by 45 paise to close at 67.78 per dollar on fresh selling of the American currency by banks and exporters in view of sharp recovery in equities.

Meanwhile, the benchmark BSE Sensex regained the crucial 25,000-mark by rising 131.63 points, or 0.52 per cent to 25,002.32 in early trade.

Source - TOI 

Sensex regains 25,000-level, up 131 points

MUMBAI: Market benchmark BSE Sensex on Monday reclaimed the 25,000-level by surging over 131 points in early trade, extending weekend's gains on fresh foreign capital inflows amid a mixed trend at other Asian bourses.

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The 30-share index rallied by 131.63 points, or 0.52 per cent, to 25,002.32, with capital goods, healthcare, IT, consumer durables, realty and auto sector stocks leading the rise.

The gauge had gained 401.12 points in the previous session.

The broader NSE Nifty also moved up 28.80 points, or 0.38 per cent, to 7,592.35.

Brokers said revival of buying by foreign investors and widening of positions by investors, mainly influenced the trading sentiment.

Besides, mixed third quarterly earnings and a mixed trend at other Asian bourses supported the rise in the domestic markets.Bucking the trend, auto sector stocks such as Hero MotoCorp and Maruti Suzuki were trading in the negative zone ahead of the monthly sales data.

In the Asian region, Japan's Nikkei moved up 1.80 per cent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slipped 0.61 per cent in early trade on Monday.

Shanghai Composite index was down 1.71 per cent after Chinese manufacturing activity fell to its lowest level in three years last month.

The US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 2.47 per cent lower in Friday's trade.

Source - TOI

Hyderabad’s unsold residential stock at 5-year low

With steady absorption coupled with improving demand, Hyderabad's unsold residential inventory has come down to their lowest point since 2010, bringing some cheer to the lacklustre market, said a report by property consultant Knight Frank. 

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There was absorption of 14,093 units in 2015 as against the 11,197 launched as new launches dropped by 14 percent in 2015, continuing the trend from 2014. 

"The annual trend in launches shows a clear decline. However, the half yearly trend over the last three periods shows supply numbers stabilising gradually," said Vasudevan Iyer, Branch Director, Knight Frank, Hyderabad. 

The report also hinted towards a recovery of 5% in absorption year-on-year during the first half of 2016. According to city developers, price correction is inevitable as Hyderabad property prices are already rock bottom and hence there will be a price appreciation. Residential units witnessed a growth of 3.1 percent year on year during the second half of 2015. 

On the other hand, the office market, despite a minor dip in absorption, posted robust numbers indicating an upward trend in office space absorption. In 2015, there was absorption of 4.6 million square feet as against 4.7 million sqft a year ago. 

Office space absorption is likely to push up by 23% year-on-year in the first half of 2016, while an approximate 1.9 million sqft space is expected to come up, the report said. 

Robust absorption coupled with falling supplies pushed vacancy levels to 14.4 percent at the end of 2015 from 17.7 percent in 2013. Interestingly, the second half of 2015 experienced the highest absorption levels of any half-yearly period in history on the back of big-ticket transactions by Qualcomm, Salesforce, Unitedhealth Group and J.P. Morgan. 

Simultaneously, rentals have been increasing steadily since 2012 and picked up momentum after the second half of 2014, post the resolution of Telangana issue. Also, severe shortage of good quality office space in prime areas has turned the market in favour of landlords, who are asking for higher rents from tenants with each passing quarter. The rentals are expected to rise by 7 percent in the first half of 2016. 

SOurce - ET 

Housing sale down 4% in eight cities in 2015

Housing sales fell by 4 percent to 2,63,720 units last year, lowest since 2010, in the eight major cities of the country on account of demand slowdown in the real estate market despite interest rate cut by the RBI.

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The National Capital Region (NCR) continued to be the worst performing market in India with sales and launches at six year low, property consultant Knight Frank said in its report released on January 29.

Launches of new homes fell by 21 percent in 2015 at 2,44,944 units in the primary market of eight major cities - NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

The unsold inventories have declined marginally to 6.91 lakh units from nearly 7.15 lakh units in 2014. Developers would take more than 2.5 years to exhaust this unsold stock.

Commenting on the report, Knight Frank India CMD Shishir Baijal said: "2015 for Indian real estate had both the good and bad news. While the office market grew from strength to strength, residential did not perform as expected."

Residential segment continued to face slowdown with launches at a five year low, despite the festive season.

"Sales in 2015 were lower than 2014 levels. Despite the 125 bps rate cut by RBI, demand did not see an uptake. Our outlook for 2016 remains muted. To further revive the demand, it is important to transmit the benefits of the rate cuts to consumers," Baijal said.

In the Delhi-NCR market, housing sales fell marginally to 48,503 units in 2015 from 48,630 units in the previous year.

However, launches of new homes fell by 20 percent to 63,458 units in NCR. The unsold inventory in NCR stands at 2.06 lakh units at the end of 2015.

On housing prices, Knight Frank India National Director (Residential Agency) Mudassir Zaidi said the prices grew by an average 3 percent last year. However, he said the rate of growth has come down from 9 percent to 3 percent in the last 36 months.

In contrast to the housing segment, Knight Frank India's Executive Director (North and Capital Markets) Rajeev Bairathi said the office space absorption stood at 40.4 million sq ft, highest since 2012, in six cities - Mumbai, NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.

Delhi-NCR witnessed absorption of 7.4 million sq ft of office space last year.

"Supply of quality office space is now a concern with vacancy levels at an eight year low. Rentals have firmed up as a result," he added.

Among sectors driving growth, IT/ITeS continues to lead with start-ups. "This year, however, we saw e-commerce and start-ups contribute to the office space uptake in a major way. Going forward, we have to wait to see if this trend continues," Bairathi said.

Source - ET

Duty-free shops at airports in non-metro cities see uptick in business

MUMBAI: International flyers from smaller Indian cities are thronging duty free shops at airports in large numbers, shopping for single malts and premium perfumes.

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"Nowadays, customers from non-metro cities have become very well informed, and there has been a rise in the number of flyers from such cities over the past two years. A growth in their disposable income fuels their buying behaviour. All these have helped us in boosting sales in non-metro cities such as Lucknow, Amritsar, Jaipur, Mangalore, etc," said Anirban Dutta Chowdhury, CEO, India at Flemingo International, which operates duty free shops at 11 cities in India, including Kolkata, Chennai, Trivandrum, Calicut, Trichy, Goa and Ahmedabad, apart from the ones mentioned earlier.

Flemingo currently gets 55 per cent of its India business from Kolkata and Chennai while the rest comes from non-metro cities.

The latter chunk has "grown substantially" over the past few years and will continue to grow, said Chowdhury without elaborating.

The airports are operated by state-run Airports Authority of India. Its chairman RK Srivastava said there has been an increase in demand for duty free in non-metro airports.

AAI over the next seven years will be investing close to $12 billion for construction of new regional airports and expansion of existing ones. More than ten of these will have bigger duty free areas.

"We are expanding our retail space. We will have stores at both arrival & departure terminals at all the locations where we operate. Departure stores at some locations such as Amritsar and Calicut were closed. Now we are in the process of reopening and making new stores there," said Chowdhury.

More Indian travellers are buying at duty-free stores in local airports instead of overseas, attracted by discounts and a growing range of spirits and perfumes stocked by operators in the country.

Source - TOI