Demand for quality housing is pretty strong and would continue to increase by 15 per cent every year, Ashish Puravankara, director of Puravankara Projects Ltd, one of the south’s leading developers, told HT in an interview.
Excerpts:
Due to the IT sector, real estate across South India, particularly Bangalore, has witnessed phenomenal growth. Do you think it is sustainable?
We continue to receive good response. Given the trend, I believe that the demand is going to remain very strong. Having said that, demand is also a function of price and affordability is the key. The developers will have innovate to make housing affordable for a larger masses. They have to move away from city centres to suburbs to bring down the cost of land, bring new technology to reduce the cost of construction, and finally, provide flexible financing arrangements so that the young generation can afford to buy it.
Does this mean that growth in the cities is going to slow down?
Land is a critical part of the real estate. Since one cannot increase the land areas in the cities, new demand will come from the suburbs or B-grade cities such as Coimbatore. Again, in the smaller towns, the nature of educational institutes will decide the kind of employment generation and which in turn will be decide the demand for real estate. If the city has an engineering college, there will more of white collar jobs and that will create demands for the IT sector or similar other areas.
{{/usCountry}}Land is a critical part of the real estate. Since one cannot increase the land areas in the cities, new demand will come from the suburbs or B-grade cities such as Coimbatore. Again, in the smaller towns, the nature of educational institutes will decide the kind of employment generation and which in turn will be decide the demand for real estate. If the city has an engineering college, there will more of white collar jobs and that will create demands for the IT sector or similar other areas.
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