India’s Silicon Valley Posts Record Home Sales

By Pooja Thakur  

Home sales in Bengaluru, India’s information technology hub, rose to a record in the June quarter as new projects boosted demand, according to Liases Foras Real Estate Rating & Research Pvt.
Sales in the city, home to the Indian units of Intel Corp. and Google Inc., rose 10 percent to 17.77 million square feet in the three months ended June 30 from the previous quarter, said Pankaj Kapoor, the founder of Liases Foras, a Mumbai-based real estate research company.
“Sales in Bengaluru have been the highest among the six major cities,” Kapoor said in a phone interview from Mumbai, citing others it tracks, which are Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, National Capital Region, and Pune. “Most of the sales are from new projects.”
The pick up in India’s off-shoring business is driving demand for homes in the southern city formerly known as Bangalore. Demand for Grade-A offices will climb 3 percent to 22.9 million square feet in 2014 from last year, the first increase in three years and the strongest demand to be seen in Bengaluru, according to broker Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Sales in the city were boosted by projects that were marketed by Godrej Properties Ltd. and Puravankara Projects Ltd., Kapoor said.

Rising Prices

Home prices in Bengaluru have risen 4 percent to 5,239 rupees ($87) a square foot in the quarter ended June from a year ago, the data showed. Most of the sales were in the middle segment where residential prices ranged from 5 million rupees and 10 million rupees, Kapoor said.
Prices in Mumbai, India’s most expensive property market, rose 2 percent to a record 13,012 rupees a square foot, the data showed. Sales slid 2 percent to 11.26 million square feet in the quarter, the data showed.
Sales in the National Capital Region, which includes New Delhi and its surrounding areas, posted the biggest decline, dropping 20 percent to 17.34 million square feet in the quarter. The weighted average selling price in the region slid 1 percent to 5,095 rupees a square foot in the quarter from the previous quarter, Liases Foras’s data showed.