The concept of green homes - meaning environmentally sustainable residential spaces - is still an emerging trend in India, but awareness about this exciting new way of life is rapidly gaining ground.
Construction of multi-storied residential apartments has gained pace in small towns, which boasted only of standalone houses built by individual owners till recently.
What do you do when you go to the dreamland promised by your developer and see no signs of what was to be your home?
Delays in construction of residential projects are common in India. Developers include a grace period, generally six months, in their agreement with buyers. Most homebuyers take a delay of 6-12 months as granted. Sometimes, possession is delayed even beyond the expected tenure.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) today approved a real estate deal between global private equity giant Blackstone group and Pune-based realty firm Embassy Group.
The proposed deal involves Blackstone and Embassy group having joint control over an entity engaged in the business of development and management of commercial and office space and related activities.
The total new demand for residential dwellings during 2012–16 will be 11.8 million units across India, according to real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield.
Of this demand, top 8 cities will account for 18 per cent or 2.1 million units across categories.
This is little doubt that the finance ministry has done more in the past three weeks in terms of policy announcement than what it has in the past three years. After a series of announcement in the insurance sector, the ministry is expected to look at a series of measures to prop up the real-estate sector.
With the current under construction and planned supply geared towards high-end, supply gap in mid-segment residential units in Ahmedabad is now over 31 per cent.
However, despite efforts to focus on the segment, high-end supply gap is also hovering at around 22 per cent, says the latest report released by global real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield (C&W).
Early stage venture fund Fulcrum Venture India has exited from real estate firm Casa Grande, said the proprietary fund's founder-partner KR Krishna.
"The entrepreneurs have bought back the stake. We invested Rs 4.8 crore in FY2004 and have exited at Rs 50 crore thus getting 10x returns," said Krishna.
The Finance Ministry is considering a proposal to relax funding norms for the realty sector so that good housing projects are not starved of funds.
"The Ministry is actively looking at options ... How to ramp up demand in the housing sector. We are studying all the possible impediments," an official source said.
"We are of the view that good project will be funded," the source said.
At a time when the real estate sector is slowing down, mainly due to high interest rates and unfavourable government policies, the services sector is expected to revive demand for office space with an estimated absorption of 28-30 million sq ft by the year-end, industry experts say.
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