Bhiwadi, as a matter of fact, has been the first town to conceptualise what is the most need-based housing in India. Facts speak for themselves. There are 98 million people over 55 with a steady growth of 3.5 per cent per annum. In terms of market numbers, in an analysis of 135 urban cities with a total population of 223 million and 52 million households, as many as 12.8 million families have senior citizens.
Amidst all the misleading claims and marketing exaggerations, location mapping is the most glaring one. Generally maps are not to scale and give the wrong perception of the location of the project. For example, the brochure will say 10 minutes from the airport or commercial district; it does not state distance in kilometres.
Largely viewed in the collective consciousness as the most affordable market of Delhi-NCR, probably the authorities did no justice to this market by positioning it as yet another micro market to supplement Noida and Greater Noida. More than the controversies and the litigations, the positioning of the market has been a challenge.
Urban planning experts believe this is a much deeper question because it is not just about the existing urban centres but also about the way urbanisation is eventually going to happen in this country. As per the UN statistics the urban population of 40 crore in India would be 60 crore in less than 20 years of time. It clearly suggests that the existing cities won’t be able to fit in this additional 20 crore population, whether indigenous or migrants.
NH 47 is currently undergoing conversion from two lane to four lane, with some sections being converted to six lane. The stretch between Coimbatore and Trivandrum via Kochi is one of the busiest among the Indian highways, with most of the traffic in this stretch comprising of trucks carrying consumer goods, construction material, container lorries and passenger vehicles. A large number of industries and textile parks are located on the highway between Coimbatore, Erode and Tiruppur districts. This highway is often referred as the lifeline for the industries in the region.
The supply of quality housing even today is confined to eight key cities. It is not that the new cities are not coming up, but neither the investors nor even the end users want to buy a house in Tier II cities today. The dream and aspiration is always Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune kind of life.
‘Location, Location & Location’ has been the tried and tested format of success in the Indian real estate. It has been the best calling card for the developers. Many even assumed that if the developer has got a piece of land in any of the highly desirable locations, that itself is enough to sell the project.
It is the roll out of the policies by the respective urban bodies that have been behind the BKC emerging as a case study of urbanisation with booming economy while Noida ending up as a ghost city sitting over piles of unsold housing stock. Both the markets nevertheless had the tremendous potential in its early stage of inception.
Word-of-mouth publicity is a wish of all the developers both for sales and branding, yet the quest is to rope in a celebrity brand ambassador even if it has the only photo-opportunity connect with the project. Of late, there are a few case studies where the developers have used buyers as brand ambassadors.
In terms of pure economics renting out a property as against buying it may sound to be logical due to poor rental yield across India, the market reality beyond fiscal prudence is not that simple. In most of the Indian cities the tenants have to pass through a number of uncomfortable questions ranging from food habits to personal lifestyle choice before they can get a rental property for living. The process itself is very tedious and prone to leave grey zones.