A company owned by Surat-based diamond merchant Ghanshyambhai Dhanjibhai Dholakia has bought a bungalow at Worli Sea face in Mumbai for Rs 185 crore, registration documents made available by Zapkey.com showed.
The 19,886 sq ft property called Panhar Bungalow, comprising basement, ground floor and six other floors, has been bought by Hari Krishna Exports Pvt Ltd.
The seller of the property is Arkay Holdings Limited, which is a firm owned by Essar Group. The property deal was registered on July 30.
The per sq ft cost works out to be around Rs 93,000 per sq ft, according to local brokers.
Bungalows can rarely be found on sale in the Mumbai real estate market, one of them said.
The brokers didn’t want to be named.
The seller of the property is Arkay Holdings Limited, which is a firm owned by Essar Group.
Moneycontrol has reviewed a copy of the documents.
Two transactions have been registered for a total sum of Rs 185 crore. First is the assignment of lease of land for the land measuring 1349 sq.m for Rs 47 crore (the market value is Rs 51.45 crore). A stamp duty at the rate of 5% has been paid on it which works out to be Rs2.57 crore.
A payment of Rs 36.5 crore has been made directly to Indiabulls Housing Finance for the loan on the land.
The second document that has been registered is the conveyance of residential building for Rs 138 crore. A stamp duty at the rate of 6% has been paid which is around Rs 8.3 crore. A cess of 1% has been remitted (Rs 1.38 crore) and hence the balance stamp duty paid is Rs 6.91 crore.
An amount of Rs 108.25 crore has been paid directly to Indiabulls, the registration documents reveal.
Arkay Holdings had granted this property as security/collateral for a loan it had availed from Indiabulls Housing. Post the payment of Rs 144.5, the charge has been released on July 26, 2021, the documents said.
There was no response to the emails sent to Arkay Holdings and Dholakia.
The registration documents showed the property has changed hands several times. The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai had first leased the land to Kubalaya Raj in October 13, 1941 for an annual lease rent of Rs 1 with the authority to him to construct a structure on it, according to the documents.
It was then put in the market and found new buyers periodically. The completion certificate for the present building was given by authorities in 2001, the documents said.
The Dholakias were in the news in 2018 when Savji Dholakia, son of Dhanjibhai Dholakia, rewarded his employees with gifts of Mercedes cars to three employees. A few years earlier, he was in the limelight when he gifted 500 flats, 525 pieces of diamond jewellery and 200 flats to his employees in 2014 as a Diwali bonus.
This deal registered in July is akin to the bungalow bought by the Damanis in the month of March this year.
In one of the biggest property deals in Mumbai, DMart founder Radhakishan Damani and his brother Gopikishan Damani bought a Rs 1,001-crore independent house in Mumbai’s posh Malabar Hill area. According to local brokers, the registration took place on March 31, the last day of the reduced 3% stamp duty on housing units in Maharashtra.
On August 26, 2020, the Maharashtra government had announced a temporary reduction in stamp duty on housing units, from 5% to 2%, until December 31, 2020, to boost the stagnant real estate market, hit doubly hard by COVID-19.
The stamp duty from January 1, 2021, until March 31, 2021, was 3%. The Maharashtra government on March 31 said it would not extend the stamp duty waiver on property registrations and kept the Ready Reckoner Rates unchanged for the financial year 2021-22.
Real estate experts said that demand for independent houses in the uber luxury segments is picking up, especially above the Rs 200 crore range, especially during the pandemic.
“Due to limited availability of such bungalows in a city such as Mumbai, decent appreciation of such properties is expected over a period of three to five years,” said Ritesh Mehta, Head Residential Property Sales, JLL.
Several high-end residential (apartment) transactions were concluded in December 2020 on account of the limited-time 2% stamp duty offer which expired on December 31.
These included two sea-facing apartments. The first was a 20th floor apartment bought by Bharat Serum & Vaccines’ Gautam Daftary on South Mumbai’s Carmichael Road for Rs 101 crore. The total area of the apartment is 6,366 sq. ft. The registration took place on December 24, 2020.
In another deal, the Motilal Oswal Family Trust bought two duplex apartments of size 6,800 sq. ft for Rs 101 crore in South Mumbai in a project called 33 South. These were registered on December 22, 2020, according to data available on Zapkey.com.
