After a bull run, the housing market is witnessing a slowdown, with the continuous decline in sales for the last two quarters. Delhi-NCR has witnessed a 20 percent drop in sales during Q1 2025. Today, middle-class homebuyers find themselves at the crossroads especially in Delhi-NCR as developers are not coming up with products with the right size and right price.
At this critical juncture, Bengaluru-based Prestige Group has made its debut in the Delhi- NCR market with Prestige City in Indirapuram (Ghaziabad)- offering a range of configurations (1681 sq ft to 6026 sq ft) to suit every budget. This one of its own kind of project, especially meets the needs of those who are looking for affordable 2 bedroom and 3-bedroom homes. Prestige City which offers a rich inventory of about 1200 2바카라“3-bedroom apartments in the sweet spot of 1.5-2 crore, has got a tremendous response with over 1200 bookings worth INR 3000 crore in the first week of launch.
Irfan Razack, Chairman & Managing Director of Prestige Group in a candid conversation at the media meet for Prestige City launch cautions developers against the hype created around luxury/super-luxury housing, overlooking what the larger market demands. In his plain talk, without mincing words, Razack offers a piece of advice for the fellow developers- to avoid going overboard and build housing for the people who can afford and live there.
Real estate developers, particularly in Delhi-NCR are creating a hype around luxury and super-luxury housing, ignoring the need to build homes for the middle-class. They say that there is no demand for such housing. Your comment.
You just can't be wholly banking on luxury /super-luxury products, overlooking what the larger market demands. It is like inviting disaster. Luxury is a niche segment. The sweet spot is in the price range of 1.5 crore to 2.5 crore. It is here that the major demand lies.
We were told by many in the industry not to build 2-bedroom apartments saying these won't sell. But I put my foot down and went ahead with 2-bedroom apartments in our newly launched Prestige City project in Indirapuram as we had done a realistic assessment of the market. Our motto is to build housing for the people who can afford and live in.
In our Prestige City, Indirapuram project, we have made a provision for about 1200 apartments in 2BHK and 3BHK configurations. A smaller 3BHK category has been specially created keeping in view the needs of a family. We have no greed and work on thin margins. Moreover, our company is not aggressive in building something which is not viable for the customers. As such keeping affordability in mind, we priced 2 BHK homes at 1.5 crore, 3BHK at 2 crore and 4 BHK at 3 crores.
We did thorough research regarding the right ticket size and ticket price. Also, we came up with a wide range of sizes (1681 sq ft to 6026 sq ft). And our strategy paid us rich dividends in the form of sale of over 1200 apartments worth INR 3000 crore.
The Delhi-NCR market has suffered because many developers encouraged speculative buying by investors, at the cost of genuine buyers/end-users by promoting undesirable practices like EOI, bulk bookings and underwriting. What do you have to say on this?
We are quite conscious of it. So, we created a mechanism to discourage bulk bookings. On the contrary, we encouraged bookings by the end-users. From day one, we were sure that we would not do mass bookings. We strongly believe that speculative Selling is a sure recipe for disaster.
We had done KYC for our customers. The entire sales process was devised in such a way that no mass buying was allowed. There was no greed in the system and the interests of the genuine customers were fully taken care of. It is because of our transparent sale process, keeping customer-centricity in mind that we could sell a record number of homes.
What is your advice to fellow developers?
It is good to dream but one should not lose sight of ground reality. Many real estate industry people get carried away. My advice to them is be sensible, understand the market and understand target customers and tailor products with right size and right pricing to achieve lasting success. We stuck to this mantra and the market has accepted our Indirapuram product very well. Going forward we will offer more products in the mid-segment residential space with suitable apartment sizes across our new developments as most of the customers are in this segment.
What, according to you, is the outlook for the Delhi-NCR market in the coming months?
Delhi-NCR is a dynamic market. In general, we should not take a short-term view and the real estate market needs to be looked at from the long-term perspective. Delhi-NCR market is good but there is a note of caution. As developers, we should not become over ambitious throwing caution to the wind. There is a huge potential to realize in the Delhi-NCR market provided developers give the right product with the right size and right pricing, suited to the needs of aspiring homebuyers.
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