Australian real estate consultancy major LJ Hooker, with significant presence in South East Asia through 700 odd franchisees, is foraying into India’s red hot realty market. The Australian company will open its account here with the first franchisee in Bangalore followed by Mumbai.

The entry comes at a time when the increasing participation of foreign investors and multi-national occupiers is driving the demand for expert-advise in the domestic real estate industry. Further, the developers, lenders and investors have also been demanding better transparency in effecting transactions.

The basket of services that the company has in the offering, apart from consultancy, includes a rent-management program and a portfolio management scheme. “Apart from finding a tenant for vacant commercial/residential space, we undertake property management activities like collecting rent on behalf of a landlord, paying his taxes for him, renewing leases, carrying out maintenance work on the property among others”.

So lets see how all this work out

The real estate is unfolding new areas of business as it matures into a full-blown organized industry. With developers on a massive land acquisition search across the country for their projects, acquiring land from local farmers or owners is a major challenge for them. Even the state governments find this to be the most ticklish of issues.
However local landlords are coming to the rescue of these developers. In a position to wield more power with landowners and farmers in their area, the bigger landlords are mopping up land in their vicinity and selling it off to the developers who are not familiar with the territory. Such landbankers, as they are known, even decide which developer will enter a particular territory.
This arrangement has both parties happy. Landbankers are paid a hefty fee for the brokerage, while developers find it easier to deal with a single dealer rather than with a host of suspicious and reluctant owners.
Landbanking has acquired a formal status, with organized players entering the stage. Zoom Developers, the Badarwals, Deepvijai promoters and A.K.Constructions in Northern India hold properties running into hundreds of acres for sale to builders.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) can save the crumbling infrastructure of existing manufacturing cities to lend impetus to the country’s growth plans. A press release by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) quoted President R.Seshasayee urging Indian industry to expand its horizons to decongest existing hubs across the country.
Existing industrial cities are buckling under pressure, and new SEZs located at reasonable, but not close proximity could supplement their activities. The construction of the SEZ ideally ought to cover an area large enough to meet all the requirements of the resident population.

SEZs would necessarily have to be multi-product in nature, providing for economy of costs. Manufacturing costs have a high element of tax embedded in them, and the new mega SEZs should address this issue. Inadequate infrastructure has added to prices, and the new economic zones with better planning should definitely help make our products more competitive, feels Seshasayee.

Is Government involvement necessary in establishing these SEZs? It had best be left to market forces, according to Seshasayee, but incentives for private investors would attract investment in select zones. Incentives on the lines of those offered to EOUs and EPZs, which have proved profitable to all small and medium companies who set up shop there, must be extended to these new SEZs as well.

Gurgaon, a city in the state of haryana, has now become much famous as india’s outsourcing capital. The impressive growth that this cyber city has shown is hardly comparable with any of what its counterparts have accomplished. Earlier, gurgaon was known to be a sleepy town on the outskirts of the capital city. Today, the situation has largely changed with several big buildings and shopping arcades doting on this suburb which has witnessed a major real estate boom for the last few decades.
In the last six months, gurgaon's residential area prices have increased by as much as 44%. Gurgaon is expected to set up about eight SEZs or Special Economic Zones which have mandates to build up residential areas or zones in order to enhance the total infrastructural class in their respective areas.
Those who sell apartments in gurgaon these days get much higher returns than in the case of flats in other areas of the national capital region. So, gurgaon property owners are set to witness happy times. However, to keep the cash registers ringing, the city authorities will have to do their bit to check the rising crime graph and improve the power scenario.

Source: Indian Realty News