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Showing posts from April, 2009

Ghaziabad - Noida Reel From Power, Water Shortages

Noida, Ghaziabad Reel From Power, Water Shortages The towns of Ghaziabad and Noida, adjoining the national capital, are facing a major crisis with long power cuts throughout the day and night. Several areas are also facing an acute water shortage.Factories have been asked to remain closed for four hours every evening when demand during for power is at its peak. Amit Makkar, a casting unit owner at Bulandshahr Road Industrial Area in Ghaziabad, said: "Apart from the scheduled 8 p.m.-6 a.m. power cut, electricity goes off any time before and after it at unscheduled hours, hitting our production badly. There are some forging units that require regular flow of electricity and at adequate voltage for their operations but in the absence of power, they are suffering immensely." Terming the present power supply situation to Ghaziabad as "extremely grave", Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd's (UPPCL) superintending engineer S.N. Yadav said: "The industries have bee

Where Is My Home?

Where Is My Home? It's A Question Thousands Of Home Buyers It's a question thousands and thousands of home buyers are grappling with....the last few years saw a bull run for developers as they clocked over 100% profits and developers splurged quite literally, not only on their Mercs and BMWs, but in acquiring land and more land--announcing, dream-like projects. Projects that made chaotic city living seem like a dream if you were paying as much as you would for a condo in Manhattan developers tried to make up for the exorbitant home prices by throwing in the frills golf course facing; gym; pool you name it and you got it! Any way, as the euphoria of a booming economy petered out a bit, home prices continued to soar... obviously, the developer was and is trying to make you pay for your home and your neighbours too... Cost of construction for a developer is Rs 1.500/sq.ft this is not including the land costs. Developers who hoarded land years back, of course, got it very cheap. S

Ambitious Hotel Projects On The Block

Developers Put Ambitious Hotel Projects On The Block But Prospective Buyers Find Valuations Too High A couple of years ago the key words for a developer were `acquisition' and `project launch'; today, they are `cash crunch' and `distress sales'. Following the prolonged economic slowdown, more and more developers are selling assets that require huge investments and have long gestation period. Most of these are hotels and huge commercial projects. Realty biggies such as DLF, Unitech and Parsvnath have put their hotel projects on the block. They also want to surrender special economic zones (SEZs). The exercise is to generate cash and improve finances, which have taken a severe hit under present market conditions. Against this backdrop, a million-dollar question that remains unanswered, is, who will buy these mega-projects and will the valuation offered be acceptable to the developer? In fact, many hotel projects, which were earlier looked upon as money-spinners, now seem

Building On Benefits

Today, apart from the realtors who are under pressure to woo customers, there are buyers who are forcing developers to offer sops. About 800 people, who had booked flats in DLF's Garden City project in Chennai last year, formed an activist forum on Google Groups in February this year. The objective: to collectively negotiate with the builder on issues such as refund of deposits and scrutiny of the original title deed. Finally, DLF refunded the deposits of 200 buyers who had decided to exit the project. It also offered a discount to those who stayed on. Similarly, in Gurgaon, another set of 500 buyers on Yahoo! Groups managed discounts from the same builder. The combined impact of consumer activism and sectoral pressures is that a prospective buyer has an upper hand while negotiating for a property. "Overall, real estate prices have corrected by 25-40% over the past six months. With funds drying up from investors, speculators, private equity players and banks, realtors have rea

NH-58 - Still not very expensive

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Now Developers Provide Prevailing Rates, NH 58 Are Not Very Expensive Compared to other NCR areas like as Gurgaon, Faridabad and Noida, rates offered on NH 58 are not very expensive the prevailing rates in the location still have scope of decreasing further N H 58 in Ghaziabad or the Delhi-Meerut Highway has emerged as an important investment destination for private de velopers. About 14 developers have launched residential projects in the area, primarily targeting customer bases in Ghaziabad, Meerut and Delhi. While prices had appeared to be on the rise beginning of 2008, a stagnation seems to be prevailing at the moment. Compared to National Capital Region (NCR) areas such as Gurgaon, Faridabad and Noida, rates offered on NH 58 are very affordable. "The connectivity of the area appears to be its biggest USP," said Sunil Jindal, CEO, SVP builders. Several infrastructural projects are in the pipeline that will bring the surrounding smaller towns with greater access to Ghaziab

Axis Bank reduces PLR by 0.5%

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Axis Bank, the country's third-largest private sector lender, and Bank of Rajasthan, an old-generation lender, today announced reductions in lending rates. Axis Bank reduced its prime lending rate (PLR) by 0.5 per cent to 15.25 per cent, while Bank of Rajasthan slashed it by 0.25 per cent to 9.75 per cent. The private sector banks' lowering of their benchmark rates came close on the heels of another private sector lender, HDFC, responding to the repeated monetary measures introduced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) this year. For Axis Bank and Bank of Rajasthan, the new rates would be effective from April 1. Axis Bank President (Credit) Partha Mukherjee said the cost of funds for the lender had come down over the past few months. "Interest rates in the system have come down and so have our cost of funds. So, we have decided to pass on the benefits to our customers," he said. Since October last year, the central bank has cut the cash reserve ratio, or the proportion

Crossings Project - On Time

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Source: Times Of India