Gurgaon News: Gaurav Puri, vice-chairman and chief architect of Ansal Buildwell, explains to Our correspondent how Noida and Gurgaon are neck and neck in the race to be the most sought-after residential destination in the NCR.
What according to you is affordable housing? Many developers are using this term to market their product. Isn’t this a gimmick?
Yes it is. But a developer’s duty is to provide affordable housing by understanding the city first. The prices shouldn’t be too low neither it should be too high. One can save on the costs by tackling the optional features. Like for our project we give
the flooring as optional. Although, when we design a project, we try to provide such floors which are pleasing to the eyes and acceptable by all. But if somebody comes with some special requirement, we do accordingly.
But we do not encourage such a trend. This will create various configurations of houses and condos within the same project, resulting in multicoloured, multifaceted houses.
Which region or satellite town in the NCR has the maximum growth potential?
The battle is in between Gurgaon and Noida. Then comes Faridabad followed by Panipat. To understand this one has to do some research. First, Noida has strong geographical advantage in comparison to Gurgaon. It is linearly situated to Delhi. Keep on developing bridges across Yamuna and you get access to parts of Delhi. While if a person living in Gurgaon has to come to Delhi, he will have to take the south Delhi route.
Second, Gurgaon has opened gates for the private developers to develop the infrastructure much earlier. Noida is now opening up. The sector plans for both have already been laid.
Third, Gurgaon has an international kind of environment. The culture today is multilingual. Noida is a step behind. Malls are still coming up in Noida.
But in the near future, both of them would excel and add value to the national capital region.
Government has announced new residential zones in Gurgaon, Noida and Delhi. What would be the impact on the prices?
I will explain this by a phrase, somebody’s cake and somebody’s poison. It will have a mixed reaction.
How many of your projects are currently running?
We have around 50 projects across the country. We have major upcoming townships in Jammu, Amritsar and Gwalior. Other cities include Jaipur, Bangalore, Kochi and Shillong. We are looking for more options in Punjab for some commercial and residential projects. We have some 500 acres of land in Gurgaon. We also have multiplexes in B and C class cities.
What according to you are B and C class cities?
I would call Jalandhar and Jaipur as class B, while class C cities are Gwalior and Jhansi.
What comparisons you draw between the two regions: Chandigarh and the NCR?
I think Chandigarh region is still cheaper than the NCR. Both have good potential.
Which project of yours do you like the most and why?
LA in Amritsar is the first one. People living in this city are extremely colourful and the climate is conducive. They have some or the other family member outside the country. So we marketed our Amritsar project as LA in Amritsar. The roadside gardens within the project, signages, streetlights, street furniture, names of roads and the entrance gates will have the same look as that present in Los Angeles.
Second is our Jhansi project. The city happens to be on the intersection of north-south, east-west corridor’s centre. It has strong growth potential as army is present in a huge way. There is also a strong presence of doctors at Jhansi.
What is your suggestion to the investors?
In my opinion, a property has a profitability span of 10 years. But this is not a certainty, as the realty market is unstable. One cannot predict when the prices will escalate exponentially or would fall drastically.
The MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) now charges property tax as per the unit area method. But the system has failed where a property owner having a large-sized property has to pay a higher tax, and if he rents it to somebody at a lower rent, he is at a loss. What are your views?
MCD is doing the right. But it would take some time to level up. The MCD has still not surpassed the market value. For such properties, whose rents have been fixed some 40-50 years back and are low, the owner can revise the rates once the lease period is over. He can then level himself to the market.
How much land bank you have? How much is the total investment for the coming year?
We have more than 4,000-5,000 acres of land. We are investing more than Rs 4,000 crore in the coming year. Our turnover last year was Rs 132 crore.
What are the company’s future plans?
In future, we will come up with multiplexes in class B and C cities. These would add value to the lifestyles of the populace. Other than this, we are also developing a chain of clubs across our projects by the name, Florence. First one in this line is ready in Gurgaon.
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source: gurgaonsearch.com
