To Buy or not to Buy…
This is probably the biggest dilemma most potential real estate buyers are in, while television and new paper reports indicate a downward trend of real estate prices and lower cost of building material, out in the field there doesn’t seem to be any indication of this. Builders that have invested in land and infrastructure costs are more keen on hanging onto their inventories than come down on prices. The recent andra-telangana split and united movements, do not seem to have even the slightest impact on any of the real estate prices. Builders are downplaying the impact of the movements, as a passing wave that will not have any long-term impact of real estate in Hyderabad. The idea seems to be still, that real estate is still on hottest and best investment for all age groups alike.
We are currently in the market for real estate and looking to buy a 2 bed room apartment in Hyderabad for our retired parents, in madiguda/miyapur area which is in close proximity to the hi-tech city / kondapur area, that seems to be the hottest area to buy property right now. Having been to at least 10-15 developments in the area, the theme of the day seems to be that, if you don’t shop as a group you are out of luck and have to pay a premium. The trend seems to be that engineers working in IT companies like Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, shop in groups of 25-50 and get huge discounts on the market price, hence giving the builders enough capital to keep the construction going and sell the rest of the units at a premium. The losers in this game seem to be individual buyers that will be paying the price for being unable to find friends that can shop together. Take for example a construction in madiguda that is building about 240 units, with world-class amenities like swimming pool, gym, yoga room, restaurant and super market. The going price per sqft was abt 2100-2200, but a group of 50 IT Engineers seem to have negotiated the price to about 1700 per sqft. This on an apartment of 1200 sqft puts the buyers buying in group about 5 lakhs lower than the others, leaving retired people like my parents, individual buyers paying a premium. I’m not sure, if there are any laws that protect this group, but it seems very unfair that you have to pay such a premium. An average consumer that works hard for his money should be protected from such egregious builders and practices, and there should be controls in place so that there is not such a big gap in price for 2 consumers.
