High-rise Projects Growing Despite Property Market Slump
The realty market in Mumbai has been dim for some time. However, the number of high-rise buildings has just grown. Several developers are launching many high-rise multi-storey projects.
Any building of height more than 70 mts or around 22 storeys can be considered a high-rise building. The technical high-rise committee of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) cleared 62 proposals for multi-storey projects during the first half of 2013. It had received about 76 proposals this year till June and most of the proposals had buildings with over 40 storeys.
The proposals cleared were mostly in the eastern suburbs and island city. Most of these projects belong to well-known developers such as Lodha Group, Nirmal Lifestyle, Omkar Builders and Orbit Corporation. Some projects are Lifestyle City and Omega by Nirmal Lifestyle, Lodha Splendora and Casa Rio by the Lodha Group.
The spurt in the number of proposals coming to the table is being attributed to the streamlining of processes in the committee. Experts and developers said that the committee has gradually brought in more clarity on terms of reference while assessing a project, along with efficiency in clearing it. The process of approval is more streamlined which has led to more developers submitting proposals for high-rise buildings. According to a developer, it was a very tedious and lengthy process earlier.
The municipal commissioner stated that another reason for an increase in the number of proposals is the increased need for public parking, which these projects are providing along with the availability of fungible floor space index (FSI). Under certain provisions of the Development Control Regulations (DCR), a new construction on an area of over 1,000 sq-mts in the island city and over 2,000 sq-mts in the suburbs receives FSI of up to 4 if the builder has agreed to develop public parking lots and hands them over to the BMC free of cost.
According to real estate consulting firms, this is lucrative for a developer. As a developer goes higher vertically, an additional floor fetches an additional 1% in his earning, hence an increase of almost 40% for a flat on the 40th floor.
The technical committee, constituted in 2004, is reconstituted every three years. The current committee has received and cleared more proposals than the previous two committees. It received about 205 proposals and cleared 70% of it with three months to go before its dissolution.
