Published & Updated as on - 2010-03-19

Mumbai developers seem to have given up on housing for the middle-class. If you thought the realty revival in the city would come through middle-level affordable housing, you cannot be more off the mark. Most new launches are looking at the Rs1-crore residential houses project.

Take Kalpataru developers — it is building a 750-unit project — Kalpataru Aura — in Ghatkopar. The project launched a couple of months ago has properties in the price range of Rsl.25 crore to Rsl.50 crore. Its Malad project, Kalpataru Pinnacle, will have 80 exclusive apartments, each priced at around Rs3 crore. Lodha Developers has launched a 42-storey apartment building, Lodha Imperia, at Bhandup, with flat prices inching towards the Rs1-crore mark. The target audience of these builders is apparently NRIs from Europe and the US.

Moreover, analysts believe developers like Lodha and Kalpataru have launched high-end projects for a specific reason of brand positioning, in view of their respective IPOs around the corner. While citing reasons for this sudden surge in demand, Pranay Vakil, chairman of global real estate consultants, Knight Frank, said, “The economy is on the recovery path. After more than four quarters of slowdown, it is the pent-up demand that has flared up the market at present. However, it remains to be seen how it fares in the coming months. One cannot ignore that there is a huge demand for affordable housing.”

Acknowledging the trend, Pravin Doshi, president of Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry, said developers have no option but to construct high-end apartments as the land cost in the city is very high. “It does not make business sense to construct 1-2 BHKs. The best option to recover their costs plus earn a profit is by constructing relatively big apartments, especially when there is a genuine demand for such houses,” said Doshi.

Source: Indian Realtynews 20/3/10