Godrej Prop sells 150 apartments in 3 days in Ahmedabad

The Mumbai-based real-estate company, Godrej Properties has sold 150 apartments within three days of launching its affordable housing project in Ahmedabad, Pirojsha Godrej, MD & CEO, Godrej Properties told CNBC-TV18 in an interview today.

The company also plans to open bookings for the fifth phase of an existing project in Ahmedabad today and expects a good momentum based on the initial enquiries. 
The Godrej group company launched a scheme of affordable housing at Godrej Garden City (GGC) in Ahmedabad On March 28. The project offers 1-BHK (bed room, hall and kitchen) flats at prices starting from Rs 16.5 lakh. Godrej Properties launches affordable housing in Ahmedabad
Pirojsha said that the affordable housing price were around 5 percent lower as compared to its regular phase, however the margin is same due to lower construction cost. For the new fifth phase being launched today, the company is charging a premium of about 6-7 percent. “The pricing is roughly Rs 3,000 per sq ft. It is a basic price and things like floor-rise add up to it,” he added.
The company is constructing five new towers, each ground plus 12 storied tall under the affordable housing project. The government in association with National Housing Bank the regulator for housing finance companies, is giving greater thrust on affordable housings in a country of 120 crore population; wherein more than 17 percent people live in slums. Pune and Mumbai projects
Godrej Properties also today announced a joint venture for 1.5 million sq ft project in Undri near Pune. The company is entitled to 40 percent of the profits from the project. The proposed housing project near NIBM in Pune will be spread over 31 acres and comprise of 1, 2 and 3 BHK apartments. 
The company has developed many properties in Pune during the last few years including Godrej Eternia, Godrej Castlemaine, Godrej Millennium and Godrej Sherwood. The company's current residential project Godrej Horizon is also located at Undri, where the new project is being proposed.
"We are quite bullish on this project and we will immediately get into designing and getting approvals for the project. We hope to launch the first phase of this project within the current financial year," Pirojsha said.
The company has also been driving its growth through redevelopment projects. "We added our first new redevelopment project almost exactly one year ago and we have since added 5 additional redevelopment projects. We now have a total of 6 projects. Two of those were added just within the past week," Pirojsha said.
Both this redevelopment project are in Mumbai. The project at Chembur project would give the company about 750,000 sq ft of sellable area. The company expects revenues in excess of Rs 1,000 crore from this project. Godrej Properties also recently added a smaller project in Malad, which will have just under 100,000 sq ft of sellable area, the company sees close to Rs 200 crore of revenue from that project.
"We do feel given our brand name and given our strategy of land acquisition that redevelopment makes a lot of sense for us. We are very encouraged with the early responses we have received. We hope to be launching some of the first redevelopment projects we added over the next couple of months and we hope to continue to add more projects on an ongoing basis," Pirojsha concluded.