Prices go north as space ‘shrinks’ in Mumbai

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Developers across Mumbaihave hiked project prices by 7-43%, leaving genuine home buyers in a fix. Worse, despite the price hike, the carpet area, or the actual space the buyer receives for his use in the property, is nowhere near the usual proportion of saleable area the developers used to offer. Earlier, developers used to give as much as 70-75% as carpet area, which has now shrunk to 55-60%.

Among the bigger realty brands, Lodha Developers has hiked prices 11-30%, Ackruti City by 10-42%, Dosti group and Godrej Properties 10-18%, Kalpataru Constructions 9-24% and Runwal Group by 10-25%, to name a few. All the developers have increased prices for properties in Thane and nearby regions substantially.

“Across all the major micro-markets, prices have risen by 10-30% since April 2010. This is after the 20-40% increases between October 2009 and April 2010. For example, prices in Borivli, are quoting Rs8,000-11,000 per sq ft, up from last year’s Rs6,000-8,000p sq ft.”

An analyst from a domestic brokerage, who spent the whole day trying to gauge sale conversions, said, “We waited the whole day, but hardly saw any inquiry translating into a sale.” An analyst from an international brokerage had this reaction to offer, “if you don’t work in the financial services sector, you can’t buy these properties; they are unreasonable.”

Will this Analyst Firm give their honest opinion to Media, I guess not....