Reality stocks may be among the worst performers at Dalal Street but it persist to enjoy the status of monarch in business arena. According to the Cushman & Wakefield – GRI India Real Estate Investment report 2008: ‘The Metamorphosis’, the pan India demand for real estate is expected to cross 1,000 million square feet by 2012. Thanks to retail, residential and hospitality sectors.
While the retail sector is expected to constitute 95 million square feet or 9 per cent of the overall expected demand, the residential segment continues to drive real estate demand with 687 million square feet, contributing 63 per cent throughout the term under consideration.
In the report, National Capital Region (NCR) emerged as a clear preference for sectors like retail, residential and hospitality. The growing importance of the region can be gauged by the quantum of demand which it is likely to see. While the commercial office sector would see a demand of 48 million square feet, residential demand would be at 114 million square feet by 2012. The growth of the retail and the hospitality sectors would follow with 19 million square feet and 17 million square feet of demand over the next 5 years.
Chennai is also expected to witness robust demand of nearly 33 million square feet of office commercial space and 6 million square feet in retail by 2012 and would be seeing the highest growth in these sectors, the C&W report revealed.
Hyderabad which has been witnessing a boom in the retail sector and is expected to match the growth rate of Chennai of 59 per cent, the report further added.
Mumbai, one of world’s most expensive office destinations, ranks forth in terms of the cumulative absolute demand at approximately 23 million square feet. This is primarily due to the high real estate values in the city which various sectors that are driving the demand in office market do not find cost competitive. However, Mumbai continues to see favourable demand for retail (15 million square feet) and hospitality (12 million square feet) sectors and rank second and third respectively.
