The Hindu Business Line : Super luxury apartments gaining ground

Around a decade ago, Pune realty watchers got their first whiff of luxury housing that was quite apart from grand bungalows in closely guarded, iconic colonies. A city-based builder floated a project where the asking price for a row-house, for the first time ever, breached the Rs 1-crore mark.

The then stratospheric price tag raised a few sculpted eyebrows and drew some incredulous whistles, and for many years, thanks largely to depressed market conditions, the enclave remained a kind of exclusive preserve of community living for the super rich.

Lately however, it seems luxury has got redefined, and living in its lap has just got easier as the super luxury housing is seeing a resurgence in the city. A quick survey reveals that over the next two years or so, there will be around 500 new apartments that fall clearly in this category, more than half of them from Marvel Realtors, which operates exclusively in this niche segment.

Panchsheel Realty recently announced a tie-up with Philippe Starck’s firm Yoo to build branded Yoo by Starck homes in India beginning with Pune. The price tag: Rs 8-11 crore per dwelling. City Corporation Ltd is also launching a project of apartments that come at Rs 5-crore plus within its Amanora Township project at Hadapsar by May. Apparently there are plenty willing to shell out some serious money for a roof over their heads.

Marvel Realtors, which has been catering to this segment alone for seven years, is putting up high-rise towers on Boat Club Road, Hadapsar and the emerging IT hub of Kharadi.

The apartments — one per floor is the mantra — range between 5,500 sq.ft and 6,500 sq.ft in size, and the cost varies from Rs 6.5 crore to Rs 8 crore depending upon the location. “Most of the buyers are end-users and not investors,” says Mr Rajesh Mani, senior manager, business development at Marvel. NRIs, corporate heads, HNIs, expatriates and celebrities make up some typical customer profiles. According to Mani, the demand — which currently outstrips supply — for super luxury apartments is around 3-3.5 per cent nationally, and stands slightly higher at 3.5-4 per cent in Pune.

“Many Mumbaiites, who earlier had second homes in Pune, are gradually moving towards making this their first home,” he says, and that is one reason for the demand for such homes to escalate.

What ‘fully furnished’ means

One might wonder what the features of a fully furnished Rs 5-crore-plus apartment are. Sheer space, or carpet area, with five or more bedrooms and servant quarters is one of the obvious ones.

The internal and external specifications and quality of construction is the second. And practically, across brands, ‘fully furnished’ implies that residents need to bring in only the contents of the walk-in wardrobes to move in.

Marvel’s homes have Italian marble every inch of the way, living areas that measure 49 ft by 28 ft, and a master washroom that is a luxurious 16’ by 14’.

The digitally enabled home provides control of every electronic gadget, and the curtains and lights to boot, via the mobile phone. Amanora promises all this and throws in value added services such as audio or video on demand. Yoo homes are selling uniqueness of design as their USP.

Ironically, Mr Anuj Puri, head of property consultants Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj, is not so gung-ho about the prospects of super luxury apartments, and concedes that Pune is perhaps the only Tier II city that seems to be providing for such a large pool. “In this market, I would have thought that catering to the middle class within the Rs 40 lakh to Rs 1 crore range, where the demand is maximum, would make more sense."

In his estimation, over a one-year time frame, the demand for top-end apartments would realistically not exceed 100.

Whatever the perception of the numbers requirement, the fact remains that this niche segment housing is beginning to establish a growing following for itself, aided and abetted, undoubtedly, by Pune’s gradual evolution into a distant suburb of older sibling Mumbai.

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