Noida, once projected as the largest industrial town in Asia, is today one of the best location for residential purpose too in the Delhi-NCR region. It is also emerged as the gateway to the investors in Uttar Pradesh. New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, or better known as Noida only, was developed in the 1970s as a modern industrial city under the UP Industrial Area Development Act, 1976.
Nationwide, market rentals across Grade A spaces continued to increase, nearing the INR 100 per square feet milestone, with an 8.7% QoQ increase in Q1 CY 2024. The disparity between market and existing rental rates expanded to approximately 14%, signalling a robust landlord-centric market environment. Specifically, Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad experienced an uptick in rental rates during Q1 CY’24 compared to the preceding quarter.
The residential sector is currently undergoing a bullish phase, characterised by a convergence of factors that foster an extremely favourable ecosystem. As we progress into 2024, we anticipate that both sales and new property launches will sustain the sector’s buoyancy. Despite the potential challenges posed by escalating land costs and limited funding options for early-stage projects, the robust underlying market fundamentals are expected to propel residential activity well above the average trend witnessed in the previous five years.
Continuing its upward trajectory, India’s top eight primary residential markets witnessed a strong demand during January-March (Q1 2024) this year with sales rising by 68 per cent in value terms to nearly Rs 1.11 lakh crore, according to a report by PropTiger.com.
Institutional investments in Indian real estate sector touched USD 1.0 billion in the first quarter of 2024, signalling a steady and positive start to the year. While this was a 40% drop compared to the same period last year, India’s real estate investments showed improvement on a sequential basis registering 21% QoQ rise. Foreign investments retained their dominance, forming 55% of the total inflows during the quarter. Domestic investments too witnessed a notable rise at 15% YoY in Q1 2024. The share of domestic inflows in overall institutional investments continued to rise to 45% in Q1 2024, compared to 24% in Q1 2023.
Global Capability Centres (GCCs) accounted for a share of one-third in the overall India office leasing in Jan- Mar ’24. Within the GCCs space take-up, E&M companies contributed to over one-fourth share, followed by automobile firms. Bangalore led the chart for GCC leasing, boasting a 60% share, followed by Hyderabad with 26% and Delhi-NCR with 9%. Notably, 38% of the large-sized deals (exceeding 100,000 sq. ft.) were secured by GCCs during this period, underscoring their significant impact on the office leasing landscape.
Bengaluru and Hyderabad emerged as frontrunners for demand of Grade A office space in Q1 2024, cumulatively accounting for more than half of the India leasing activity. The office market of Hyderabad especially demonstrated a strong momentum with 2.2x space uptake in Q1 2024 as compared to the corresponding quarter last year. This demand was driven by Healthcare & Pharma and Technology sectors. Amongst other major office markets, Mumbai too experienced a notable surge in leasing activity, an impressive 90% YoY rise in Q1 2024.
The overall leasing by luxury brands across the formats stood at 0.6 mn. sq. ft. in 2023, at almost 170% Y-o-Y growth. While High Streets constituted a 45% share in the overall luxury retail leasing in 2023, luxury brands’ stores in Malls followed at 40% and standalone stores accounted for the remaining 15%. This surge in leasing has been accompanied by the entry and expansion of various international luxury fashion, watch and jewellery brands across different locations. The eight cities tracked for leasing include Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Hyderabad.
Greater Noida West, or Noida Extension in popular parlance, is a case study in how a high potential property market suffers from years of systematic plight. Reason is more political apathy than administrative callousness, and the home buyers in this part of the world are waiting for basic services like Underpass, Metro Rail, Foot Over Bridge among others for around a decade now. A micro market with around a million (10 lakh) vote bank, taken together voters of high-rise apartments & adjoining villages, is part of Gautam Buddha Nagar Lok Sabha constituency. Ravi Sinha finds that the citizens in this part of the world have no one but themselves to blame for having allowed elected representatives to treat them as taken for granted voters.
This is not a one-off stray incident of cheating in the housing market in this part of the world. Srikanth had a similar experience with the Gurugram-based developer when he wished to sell out his much-delayed under-construction property due to medical emergency in the family. The developer refused to transfer the property in the name of the new buyer. He instead offered him to buy back the said property at three years old price when Srikanth had booked the apartment. The choice for this harassed home buyer was to either forget about the appreciation or else get into a costly and lengthy litigation.