The steady source of rental income is the prize everyone is after in the realty segment. Not surprisingly, office realty is now the brightest star in the universe of Indian real estate.
The ‘Citi Centre’ building in Mumbai’s prime business district, the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), was at the heart of contention between K Raheja Corp. and South Korean Mirae Asset Global Investment. This year also saw Tokyo-based Sumitomo Corp. offering a record bid of whopping ?2,238 crore for a three-acre plot in BKC. Blackstone, deal of ‘One BKC’ for a record 2,500 Crore is another 2019’s biggest commercial deals.
The story seems to unfold similarly elsewhere. Amazon is set to acquire more than 4 million square feet of builtto-suit office space in Bengaluru, the largest single office space transaction in India in terms of area. The Delhiheadquartered ASF group is in talks to buy a land parcel on the Golf Course Extension for over Rs 700 crore, to expand its office portfolio. While, DLF and Hines are jointly developing a commercial project on a nearly 12-acre land parcel in Gurugram’s Udyog Vihar.
Among large pre-leasing transactions in Hyderabad, WeWork took up 250,000 lakh sq ft, Global Data leased 180,000 sq ft in Hi tech city and Simpliwork has rented 300,000 sq ft in Gachibowli, Hyderabad.
THE WORKSPACE REVOLUTION
- As per RBI data, bank lending to commercial real estate projects rose 15% compared to 4.2% last year.
- Knight Frank Research recorded office leasing at a decadal high of 27.4 mn sq ft in a single period during H1 2019.
- Across the top 8 cities, co-working space providers have taken up approximately 4 million square feet of office space during H1 2019, a 42% growth from 2018.
- JLL reports shows a healthy pan India absorption which is anticipated to grow steadily to surpass 39 million sq. ft. by 2020.
All the above reports show India’s favored position among by global and domestic firms for their Global Inhouse Centers (GICs) and technology services centers. The trend predicts strong share of tech corporates in overall office space take-up going forward. While metro and Tier-1 cities have dominated large sized acquisitions, a few large deals were also reported in Chennai, Pune and Ahmedabad and Kolkata this year.
