| The road less travelled |
|
|
Dnaindia.com, November 29, 2007
Second home buyers in Mumbai are looking at lesser-known locations.
In the last few years, A Shyamsundar, COO of property dealers Disha Direct, has noticed a new trend among buyers. “People come with the idea of buying houses in Lonavala or Pune, but when we tell them about new locations, they are equally amenable to booking there,” he says. Mumbai’s weekend home buyers seem to have become adventurous enough to try new places.
Karjat, Kasara, Talegaon, Vikramgad, Wada, areas in rural Thane are now replacing Khandala, Lonavala and Alibaug as new, hot destinations for second homes. “People still want to be close to the ‘moneypolis’ of Mumbai,” says DS Kulkarni of Soft Corner Homes. But buyers are emboldened to pick spots that are not the most common, or even the most accessible. “Today, if you pick a project with a reputed builder, you don’t have to worry about whether or not you will get your house,” adds Kulkarni.
The choice of new locations is driven by many factors. The first, of course, is price and availability. With an older generation of buyers cornering the outskirts of the ‘golden triangle’ of Mumbai-Pune-Nashik, new house hunters are looking elsewhere. “Pune has become like a satellite town of Mumbai,” says Vishwajeet Jhavar, CEO of the Pune-based Marvel Realtors.
“That means, second homes here have touched Mumbai property prices, and may be unaffordable to many.” So even Mumbaikars are now looking at the suburbs of Pune and Nashik, having exhausted options around Mumbai. The Panvel-Khopoli belt is in demand as are Karjat and Vagoli, which are better accessed from Pune.
The second driver is infrastructure. “With the four-laning of the Mumbai-Nashik highway in the pipeline, suddenly, a house in Kasara makes sense,” says Shyamsundar. Talegaon’s development, for instance, is linked to an IT-pharma-MNC onslaught on the area. With more foreign companies planning units in this emerging economic hub, second homes are much in demand among expatriate executives of these companies.
Builders say there is growing demand for new locations along all the four major highways — Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Nashik, Mumbai-Ahmedabad and Mumbai-Goa.
|
|
|
