LUXURY HOUSING GOLD RUSH

A WAVE OF RECORD-BREAKING DEALS IS RESHAPING INDIA'S LUXURY HOUSING MARKET. THE WEALTHIEST ARE INVESTING IN AMENITY-RICH APARTMENTS. IS THIS A LASTING SHIFT OR ANOTHER REAL ESTATE BUBBLE?

- BY MANOJ SHARMA

IN MUMBAI'S real estate market, it takes something extraordinary to raise eyebrows.

In May, Leena Tewari, chairperson of pharma major USV, did just that as she bought two sea-facing duplexes in Worli's Naman Xana, a 44-floor tower, for ₹703 crore ($83 million), including stamp duty and taxes. At ₹2.83 lakh a sq. ft, the price is among the highest ever recorded in Mumbai.

She is not alone. Banking titan Uday Kotak and family put down ₹400 crore-plus for all 22 apartments at the G+2 sea-facing 19 Shiv Sagar building, a two-minute drive away. That's more than ₹2.75 lakh per sq. ft. Godrej Industries Group's executive director Tanya Dubash also bought a ₹225-crore duplex in Naman Xana. The Lodha Group sold a ₹187-crore apartment at its Sea Face project just this March.

Up north, DLF Camellias in Gurugram sold a 16,290 sq. ft penthouse for ₹190 crore to Rishi Parti, CEO of Info-x Software Technology, at ₹1.17 lakh per sq. ft, the highest price for that project to date. In June, Deepinder Goyal, founder & CEO of food delivery major Eternal, acquired a 10,813 sq. ft apartment in the same project for ₹52.33 crore at ₹48,390 per sq. ft.

A structural shift is underway at the top of the housing pyramid. In three years, 49 properties priced at ₹100 crore or more have changed hands in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR alone, with the deal value exceeding ₹7,500 crore, according to data from property consultants ANAROCK. With 59 transactions exceeding ₹40 crore each, 2024 has proved to be the biggest year yet.

So, if price per sq. ft is the new power metric in Indian realty, where are these elite buyers parking their money?

The top-tier money flow