Property prices slump in 'Cyberabad'

"BEST BARGAIN: Plots measuring 200 square yards each and worth Rs 6 lakh at Shamshabad airport area are up for sale for Rs 4 lakh only. Contact Ms Nandya, Best Avenues,” reads an SMS doing the rounds in Hyderabad.

The text message reflects the grim real estate scenario in and around the cyber city. The ongoing agitation for a separate state of Telangana has crippled the sector, already hit hard in the past one year because of the global meltdown.

And since the Telangana agitation gained momentum in the last week of November, real estate transactions have come to a grinding halt in the state capital.

Builders who have completed their ventures are even ready to sell property for low profits, but buyers are preferring to wait, hoping the prices will further plummet.

“ Already, there is a drop of 20- 25 per cent in the price of flats in the last few weeks. The average cost of a flat which was around Rs 3,300 per sq ft in a fast- growing area such as Dilsukhnagar and Kukatpally has come down to Rs 2,500. Still, the buyers are waiting for the prices to fall further,” K. Vishnuvardhan Sarma of Vaishnavi Builders, which targets middle- class buyers, said.

C. Shekhar Reddy, president of AP Builders’ Forum, said the recession- hit sector had already been stagnating, as a result of which the prices already crashed.

Many real estate ventures launched in high- profile areas such as Gachibowli, Gopannapalli, Manikonda, Vattinagulapalli and Tellapur before the meltdown are either still under construction or failed to take off because of the lack of prospective buyers — mostly software professionals and entrepreneurs.

“ We had paid huge amounts as advance to landowners from whom we took the plots for building residential complexes.

But we had to stop construction midway because of the recession.

At a time when the real estate sector started showing the signs of recovery, the Telangana agitation has come as a bolt from the blue. All our activities have come to a standstill again,” a real estate developer in the Gopannapalli area said.

P. Nagaraju, chairman of the PNR group of constructions, said there were no buyers even if the builders offered the flats at low prices. “ Worse still, those who booked some of the flats are now pressuring us to return the advance amount. They are prepared to forfeit a lakh or two, but want to cancel their bookings, fearing that the property values will come down drastically in future,” Nagaraju, one of the top 10 real estate dealers in Hyderabad, said.

“ The sooner the Telangana issue is resolved, the better. We don’t mind the formation of a separate state. At least then, the real estate activity will pick up,” he said.

Interestingly, the property prices have started shooting up in the Vijayawada- Guntur area because of speculation that the belt will be made the capital of Andhra in the event of the formation of a separate Telangana.

According to reports, real estate prices in Vijayawada have gone up by 15- 20 per cent in the last month.

President of the Vijayawada Builders’ Association, Gadde Rajling, said there was a sudden increase in the sale of apartments.

“ The number of customers making inquiries about and buying new flats has shot up,” he said, adding that some buyers were even bulk- booking apartments on the outskirts of the city.

Source: mailtoday