Sunday, December 09, 2007

Low occupancy in palm beach road in Navi Mumbai

I was driving on palm beach road few days ago in the night and I noticed very few lights in the numerous apartments which dot the road. The location is good but I guess Navi Mumbai residents seem to be priced out of it. There was another mention of a Cidco flat which was priced at 45L and still not selling

NAVI MUMBAI: While builders have claimed that 18,000 to 20,000 houses have been sold in Navi Mumbai this year, statistics show that barely 10,000 house transactions have been formalised at sub-registrar offices here to date. The boom, if any, appears one-sided—favouring only the affluent.

Secretary of the Navi Mumbai Chamber of Housing, Manohar Shroff, insisted that the market has picked up after a slump earlier this year. However, no one is denying that only a fractional affluent class is interested in the highly priced realty of Navi Mumbai, a city that, ironically, was created in the early 1970s only to decongest Mumbai.

For example, a 2-BHK flat in Kharghar can cost Rs 35 lakh to Rs 42 lakh. At Palm Beach Road, it comes for Rs 90 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore. Little wonder that barely 10% of flats on Palm Beach Road are occupied.

Rahul Thakur, a lawyer who has lived in Vashi all his life, said, “It's true that a handful of malls and many towers have come up in areas like Vashi, Kharghar and Palm Beach Road, but that is not an indication of house sales, because working professionals like me cannot afford these very high prices.''

Developer Nalin Shah said that at the ongoing property exhibition of the Builders' Association of Navi Mumbai (BANM), a Mumbai visitor who owns a bungalow in Juhu was interested in a Rs 5 crore villa at Khargha

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