Realty Digest: News,reviews on real estate growth, investment in India

Axiom Estates, being a leading provider of India Property Services to the Indian Diaspora around the globe provide the best in class options that match client requirements, best practice transaction structure & support, and key collateral services to enable clients to get the best out of their investment. Axiom's extensive network, marketing and sourcing arrangements with leading players in Indian real estate, there direct presence across India and internationally, gives an unique and incomparable access to the dynamics and drivers of the Indian real estate. Axiom estates is orgainisng a Road show(7th-28th june’08), in which they have several of India's top brand developers participating including the likes of SD Corp, Hiranandani Upscale, Rustomjee, Unitech, Parsvnath, Emaar MGF & Kumar and launching some very exciting new projects. They also have over 300 new developments in 20 cities to offer.

Sterling Urban Developments, a joint venture floated by HDFC Property Fund (a subsidiary of Housing Development Finance Corporation) and Bangalore-based Sterling Developers will take up development of 150 acres in Whitefield at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore. The project, ‘Sterling Villa Grande’, is being taken up in Whitefield and will see a total built-up of 20 million square feet at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore. The project is being built in phases. Along with the Bangalore project, the company is also into expansion. As part of expansion the company has commenced property development in Pune and Kochi. The company is actively considering acquiring two infrastructure companies to aggressively enter infrastructure sector. Sterling Developers’ investment plans span education and hospitality sectors as well. The company has acquired land for hotel project in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Currently, the company owns and manages the Canadian International School, in Bangalore and is planning one each in Lonavla and Noida. The move by HDFC to invest in the property development of Sterling Developers follows a string of high-profile global private equity in Bangalore real estate. Global institutions such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Blackstone, Citi are actively hunting down lucrative investments in this market which is witnessing growth at a furious pace.

Real estate developer Nirmal Lifestyle Ltd plans to build five integrated townships costing about $5 billion (Rs20, 300 crore) in 10 years. The firm, which has developed a township, and residential and retail projects in the city, said three of the townships will be in Mumbai, and one each in Pune and Indore. Each of the projects will include an IT special economic zone, and will have about 20 million sq. ft each. The company is finalizing the land acquisition for these projects. They plan to fund the land acquisition through internal accruals. For each city, they will also look at partners but that will only be on maturity of the project. They also plan to go public in the next 12-18 months. Nirmal is currently developing a 3 million sq. ft shopping mall in Mumbai and a 1,080-room hotel project, jointly with France’s Accor SA. Real estate developers in India have rushed to set up industrial zones and townships in the last few years due to easier investment rules and rising demand for homes and offices.