Confident the real estate sector will do well as long as there are “right developers, right pricing and right unit size”, eminent banker Deepak Parekh said that a number of new growth drivers are also emerging in the form of student housing, retirement homes, and co-living projects.
Warehousing business
He said that foreign investors have also been investing in a big way in good commercial projects, while warehousing is another segment where they are showing keen interest. “Student housing is a very big growth area, and it has taken off well. Many universities, colleges and educational institutions are now selling their own housing to raise money to build more classes, facilities,” said Parekh.
“The other growth area right now is co-living. People, including foreign investors, have also started talking about rental housing. And many are also building projects for senior citizens, including some being built by people themselves. We are funding some of them actually,” said the Chairman of HDFC Ltd. Retirement homes are like hostels with all kinds of facilities available for senior citizens, and places such as Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai-Pune region have started seeing such projects.
According to a recent study conducted by News Corp and Softbank-backed realty portal PropTiger, co-living spaces have emerged as a “real estate goldmine” that remains largely untapped.
The study added that it has the potential to turn into a $93-billion market annually on rising demand from students and professionals.
On the other hand, the co-working space is also seeing huge growth. According to Knight Frank, co-working operators leased 4 million square feet of office space across eight major cities during the first half of 2019 to meet rising demand from corporates and start-ups. This marks a growth of 42 per cent over H1 2018.