Indian Property

By Rohan Sharma, Senior Manager – Research & Real Estate Intelligence Service, Jones Lang LaSalle India The 250-kilometer stretch between Delhi and Jaipur has become a hotbed for real estate development, with areas like Manesar, Dharuhera, Bhiwadi, Neemrana, Kotputli and Alwar becoming the new catchwords for investors. Highways connecting various towns and cities serve a dual purpose. Not only do they provide good connectivity and accessibility, they also serve as nodes which spur development. Typically, the portions of the highways which abut cities lying on these routes witness hectic development activity right from the time projects are first announced. This activity gather momentum as the highway nears completion. The NH-8 connecting Delhi to Jaipur has seen a similar growth trajectory. Gurgaon, being closer to Delhi and part of NCR, has seen spiralling growth in real estate development. With existing road infrastructure in the form of NH-8 and the Gurgaon city exhau

IndoSpace Logistics Parks , a developer of industrial real estate and warehouses, on Tuesday (21 January 2014) announced closing of its second real estate fund: IndoSpace Logistics Parks II (ILP II). It raised $330 million through the fund, against its target of $300 million. “The majority of the capital was raised from IndoSpace’s existing investors from Fund I and some new marquee investors. The fund’s investor base consists of leading endowments, foundations, sovereign and pension funds,” the company said in a press release. IndoSpace is a joint-venture of Everstone Group and Realterm Global. IndoSpace Logistics is developing around 32 million square feet of industrial and warehousing facilities across India, including Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. IndoSpace Logistics' tenants include multinational firms and logistics companies. 

Suvishesh Valsan, Senior Manager - Research, Jones Lang LaSalle India, on rampant practice of pre-launch selling of properties even before the builder has necessary approvals in place for the project. Pre-sales of residential units is a widely followed practice universally. However, in India, developers go a step further, offering units for sale at a prelaunch stage. During prelaunch, developers offer investors an opportunity to purchase residential units ahead of even procuring all necessary approvals. At times, land title due diligence or product-mix (retail, residential, commercial) considerations may still be underway. During prelaunch, developers apprise an inner circle of brokers/investors that a property not officially launched in the market is available for sale. While one imagines the news spreads through word-of-mouth or email, recently we have seen prelaunch announcements made on public hoardings and in newspapers. For developers, prelaunch provides funds, which c

Indiareit announces final close of Domestic Scheme V at Rs 1000 crore; returns Rs 100 crore+ oversubscription; Commits 25% of corpus across three transactions Mumbai; 08th January 2014: Indiareit Fund Advisors Pvt Ltd , the real estate private equity arm of Piramal Enterprises, has announced the final closure of Domestic Scheme V. The fund, which had a targeted corpus of Rs 1,000 crore (including a greenshoe option of  Rs 250 crore) had earlier crossed the basic fund size of Rs 750 crore in November. In a short span of a few weeks since, the fund has continued to witness a steady level of applications resulting in a final close taking place just prior to the end of the year. Mr. Khushru Jijina, Managing Director – Indiareit, said “We are grateful for the overwhelming support shown by the investor community for our fifth domestic fund. In fact, despite reaching a final close and hitting our hard cap limit of Rs 1000 crore, we have had to turn away applications in recent days that s

By Ashutosh Limaye, Head – Research & REIS, Jones Lang LaSalle India FDI In Retail – As It Happened India’s decision to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail towards the end of 2012 and its FDI policy modified in April 2013 put the country back on the retailing map of the world. However, this is not the first time that India has invited global retailers to set up their shops. A retail street. Source: Flickr In 1997, the government approved 100% FDI in “cash and carry” wholesale stores under the automatic route and, in 2006, 51% FDI was allowed in single-brand retailing, although with prior approval from the government. In December 2011, the government fully opened up FDI in single-brand retail stores. A number of international retail brands such as IKEA and Carrefour were excited to enter the Indian market and announced their plans to start talks on investment proposals with the concerned ministries. In the much-debated and politically-se