Q: I remember that in 2012, Jubilee Hills didn't do too well in the real estate market. What is the current situation? Have there been developmental changes?
At the time not many investors were looking at Hyderabad because there was a lot of political unrest. Now that there is assured political stability, the real estate market value has increased by 30% in the last one year which is even more than other tier-1 cities like Bangalore and Chennai. Another good thing is that property rates are 60 to 50% cheaper than these southern cities. Even in terms of occupancy rates, Hyderabad is doing very well. But road no 36 in Jubilee Hills and Himayath Nagar and Road No.1 in Banjara Hills are the only localities in Hyderabad that still seem to have vacancy for offices. I think this will also pick up soon, now that the new budget for 2014 has a lot of money allocated for infrastructure development.
I think the reason for the very slow occupancy rate is because the locality also had some civic issues in the past right? Garbage disposal was a big problem here. There were overflowing dustbins and garbage all over the streets. But now Jubilee Hills is rid of that problem and is a perfect locality to live in. Well, maybe not perfect because every place will have some glitch or the other. There is good connectivity here, but Gachibowli and hi tech city have a lot of developmental projects that widen the roads and what not. So because of that I think people are choosing such places even though cost of commercial space in Jubilee Hills is cheaper than the other areas.
You can't do much to help the situation of over supply. That was what the problem was. Many places in hyderabad including Gachibowli, hi tech city and Madhapur all had a lot of commercial space initially without much demand for it. There was only moderate demand but very soon the demand increased. That is the case with Jubilee Hills. Now it is thriving and is one of the prominent places to set up office. Especially now that hyderabad is the capital for 2 states for the next 10 years, real estate values here are on the rise. hyderabad has listed Jubilee Hills to be one of the best places for investment for good returns. So I think the situation is all fine now.
Actually the thing is, it is not that Jubilee Hills didn't do well. It is a good residential locality having IT offices and very nice places like malls and all that. In 2012 , sudenly there was large increase in demand for commerical space in Jubilee Hills and there was automatic growth of business sector over here. But graphs showed that only 50% of the commercial space was actually occupied. 72 buildings for office space were constructed and only around 33 were fully occupied at that point. Other buildings had only ground floor tenants and the other floors remained unoccupied for long time. Many business peoples are preferring commercial space that is furnished but since this is additional expense for the developers, they do not undertake this. Now I think the locality is doing really well.