The festival season has begun and already, the fast-moving consumer goods market is full of offers, discounts, freebies and goodies.
Builders constructing massive residential projects are also following the trend with irresistible discounts and special offers. Be it slashing the base price of apartments or offering plenty of free add-ons, developers are coming up with plenty of incentives, not just to fast-track the sale of unsold housing units in Chennai – reported to be nearly 40,000 — but also to sell homes of their newly-launched projects.
However, most of the offers come with a common rider – they are on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis or for a specific number of initial bookings, promoters say. For instance, a leading promoter slashed the base price of a residential project on Rajiv Gandhi Salai from the prevailing rate of about Rs. 6,500 to Rs. 5,000 per square foot, but only for the first 100 bookings.
At Oragadam, the new industrial hub near Chennai, a promoter has promised a rental compensation of Rs. 20,000 a month for one year for the first 20 bookings.
Do such offers result in significant savings to investors? “Yes,” says Kanchana Krishnan, Director, Knight Frank India, Chennai. “It definitely does. Unlike the last couple of years where the festive season marked dull sales, there is some cheer this year as the Reserve Bank of India cut the repo rates by 50 basis points. Developers cash in on the positive sentiments by way of offering discounts and freebies to accelerate sales,” she explains.
Sources in the industry also say that they come up with offers to give a much-needed boost to the sector that has been under some pressure now and that this is a step in the right direction. Ajit Chordia, president of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India, Chennai, says the demand or investments on new homes during the festival beginning now till the end of Deepavali is low in Chennai, unlike in other cities such as New Delhi and Ahmedabad.
