Monday, August 13, 2012

A tryst with the Nawabs!

In the heart of ‘babudom’, the city of nawabs is still being built by the government, while private players remain on the periphery, says avinash mishra

In this ‘City of Babus’, commercial plots have never managed to catch the fancy of the masses, or elites for that matter. The real estate sector of capital Lucknow, has witnessed manifold increase in prices of the housing plots. Nevertheless, going against the trend, a number of real estate players invested heavily in commercial properties and launched several malls, multiplexes and commercial complexes prior to the recession. Despite these efforts, they invariably failed to create any buzz in the market or incite any curiosity. And then came the meltdown. Whatever little demand it had been able to elicit got buried altogether.

Nonetheless what proved to be a loss for commercial plots’ proved out to be a gaining ground for housing plots’. In fact, it appears that the city is on a shopping spree for housing plots’. It is almost bordering frenzy; so much so that government housing organizations such as Lucknow Development Authority and Housing Development Board have run out of housing plots altogether. They are trying to utilize whatever space is left by constructing flats and auctioning it. This scarcity of plots has led to a sudden spurt in the price of plots owned by the Authority and Housing Development Board. For instance, in the prestigious Gomati Nagar Project, the Authority is selling plots at the rate of Rs 7,500 per square meters, up from Rs 4,000 per square meters last year. The same plots are going for Rs 25,000 per square meters, up from Rs 15000 per square meters in the resell.


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