Never-ending demand for luxury projects

The Levelup project, a RERA compliant, green project is swiftly progressing to completion and is expected to be ready for delivery by Sept 2017. The boutique property would be raised over one acre of land. These homes would be spread across 2,056 – 3,826 sq ft. The price of the apartments vary from Rs 19,000 - 24,000 sq ft. 

Elaborating on the potential for big ticket projects within the central business district (CBD), T Chitty Babu, Chairman & CEO, Akshaya Homes, tells us, “As the city continues to expand, popular locations like Nungambakkam, Sterling Road, with limited land parcels have come up for redevelopment. Earlier, the high-value home buyers were quite content with having a home in the city’s posh locales. But today, most Indians are well-traveled and have a cosmopolitan outlook when it comes to lifestyles. With demand being steady in such prime locations given the buyer profile, setting up an upscale project at Nungambakkam makes more sense.” 

He adds, “The luxury residential market has never taken a beating as it’s one where the buyers always have money. However, it’s not a very large market, when you speak in terms of volumes. We had opened our bookings last October and had forecast that we would sell only nine homes, but we ended up selling almost 15 homes in Phase 1.” 

The developer also spoke about how the implementation of RERA (Real Estate Regulation Act) from May onwards, will give an added impetus to credible builders as the system will only have place for fully compliant realty operations. With RERA proposing a positive regulatory environment that is turning pro-consumer, Babu adds, “Invesstment in real estate is set to turn more attractive for the NRIs as well. The principle of transparency is a must for every sphere of the real estate sector. The advent of RERA has indeed helped us in build a strong support system for the industry. Also, developers need to pace up with the changing regulatory reforms to retain foothold in  the industry.” 

Babu also highlighted the fact the company has planned on more redevelopment projects across the city. He says, “We are keen on redevelopment of the city. We are taking over many of the old buildings here which are in dilapidated state, and redeveloping it. For instance, the site of the Levelup project used to be an IFDCI-owned building earlier, which had about 80 homes. We converted it into a 48-home project. Our next redeveloped project will be coming up at the site of the old Shanthi Theatre on Anna Salai, which will be revealed in April.”