In the first 10 minutes of the interview, Murali M, CMD, Shriram Properties, has twice debunked the notion that the real estate market is in a slump. His peers, when they read this, would possibly raise their brows. At a time when most developers are reeling under growing inventory, Murali has been selling apartments at a faster pace than he builds them. Not only that, he has been announcing new projects across cities where he has a presence.
Ask him about it and he says candidly, “For long, there’s a pithy maxim in our business. Give the customers what they want. Going against market demand and trends is not in anyone’s interest.”
Consider this: About 85% of real estate in the country is sold in the 10 large cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, and Kolkata. “One has to identify and discern the different segments of commercial, hospitality, residential and know what will work. A residential building will sell quickly if one does the math to figure out how much commercial real estate was sold. That tells you with more offices in the area, there will be demand for housing,” he adds.
Today, the developer has a total 54.87 million sq-ft either under construction or in the pipeline, across 31 projects.
BUILD, BUILD, BUILD
There is a pyramid to building housing, which is common knowledge. But Murali takes it a step further. “The EWS has huge demand, but poor supply. Demand for affordable housing is again high, but few cater to this segment. If you dissect the portfolio of large developers catering to the mid-market segment (and also affordable), they have practically zero inventory. In fact, the inventory that everyone talks about is in the luxury segment. And the reasons are obvious. The real estate business is not cyclic. It is the luxury housing segment that is cyclic,” he says firmly.
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