Welspun Group chairman BK Goenka has purchased a penthouse for Rs 230 crore only a few days after 28 housing units worth Rs 1,238 crore were bought by family members and associates of Radhakrishna Damani, founder of Avenue Supermarts that runs the D’Mart chain of stores, in Mumbai last week.
The price Goenka paid for purchasing the penthouse in the same project as Damani makes it probably the country’s single most expensive sale of an apartment.
Property brokers say that they expect strong closures for the remaining units in the project at rates above the current deal and the last registered deal, adding that they expect the sales momentum to pick up.
They say that the uber-luxury market will be on fire until March 31, 2023. This is on account of a provision introduced in Budget 2023, announced on February 1, that was expected to have an impact on the sale of such properties from April 1.
A Rs 10-crore cap has been imposed on the reinvestment of capital gains from the sale of long-term assets, including property. No such cap is applicable at the moment.
According to documents accessed by real estate data analytics firm Liases Foras, Goenka purchased the penthouse through group company Texreal Private Ltd from Oasis Realty in Tower B of Three Sixty West in Worli.
The penthouse, located on the 63rd floor, is spread across a carpet area of 29,885 sq. ft. and a terrace of 4,815 sq. ft.
The deal was registered on February 8, 2023. The buyer paid a stamp duty of Rs 13.83 crore. It comes with 14 car parking spaces, the documents showed.
There was no comment from the developer or the buyer.
Brokers said that the price per sq. ft. for the deal works out to around Rs 77,146.“This is perhaps the most expensive deal pertaining to an apartment in the country. We anticipate more deals in the ultra-luxury segment until March 31, 2023, on account of the changes proposed in Budget 2023 in connection with Section 54 and Section 54 F,” said Pankaj Kapoor, founder, and Managing Director of Liases Foras.
For better targeting of tax concessions and exemptions, Budget 2023 has proposed to cap deductions from capital gains on investment in residential houses under Sections 54 and 54F at Rs 10 crore.
In the case of the Damani deal, the total carpet area bought by him and his family members and associates spans 182,084 square feet and includes 101 slots for car parking.
All the transactions were registered on February 3, 2023. Most of these apartments have a carpet area of 5,000 sq. ft., and cost Rs 40-50 crore on average, property registration documents accessed by Zapkey.com showed.
Brokers said that the last deal registered in this project was struck at Rs 1.23 lakh per sq. ft. of carpet area. A price of around Rs 70,000 per sq ft (base price) at an almost 20 percent discount could have been agreed to as there was pressure on Sudhakar Shetty, one of the co-owners, to repay loans.
The total stamp duty paid was Rs 74.28 crore, the documents showed.
Three Sixty West
The project by Oberoi Realty contains 4BHK and 5BHK units. It comprises two towers, of which one will house the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the other will have luxury residences managed by the global hospitality chain. The sea-view project presumably gets its name because its height is 360 meters.
The project is registered under the name Oasis Realty and had four promoters: Skylark Buildcon Pvt. Ltd, Shree Vrunda Enterprises, both part of Shetty’s Sahana Group, and Oberoi Constructions Ltd and Astir Realty LLP, which are promoted by Vikas Oberoi. The seller is builder Shetty, who had partnered with Oberoi to redevelop the project.
Skylark had taken a loan of Rs 1,000 crore from Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (now Piramal Finance) in 2019 at an interest rate of 14.22 percent and a tenure of 72 months (48 months’ moratorium and 24 months’ repayment period).
Units in Oberoi 360 West were provided as collateral, according to data provided by Propstack.
Real estate brokers said the bulk deal led by Damani appears to have been entered into to bail out Shetty.
Market experts said luxury apartments in Worli usually sell at a price of Rs 90,000-1.05 lakh per sq. ft. The flats sold in the Damani deal indicate a price range of around Rs 70,000 per sq ft (base price). The Welspun deal works out to around Rs 80,000 per sq ft.
More deals expected
Another penthouse in Tower B of Three Sixty West has been purchased by builder Vikas Oberoi for Rs 230 crore.
Oberoi's Oberoi Realty has also bought the partnership firm, Oasis Realty, which developed the property. On February 4, 2023, Mumbai-based Oberoi Realty said in a regulatory filing that in December 2022, its shareholders had approved the purchase or acquisition of residential premises in Three Sixty West constructed by Oasis Realty for up to Rs 4,000 crore.
It was a material related-party transaction, it added.
Oberoi Realty said the company had concluded the purchase or acquisition of residential premises in the project. The company said it had purchased a total carpet area of 523,039 sq. ft.
The total number of units purchased was 63 while the total amount of consideration paid by the company was Rs 3,403 crore.
“Consequently, the company has also recovered its entire funding towards construction cost and other deposits, as well as its share of profit, from Oasis Realty,” it said in the regulatory filing.
The stamp duty for the purchase of the units will be available to be set off to the subsequent buyer of such units for all sales that will be done in the next three years, it said.
On August 26, 2020, the Maharashtra government announced a temporary reduction in stamp duty on the sale of housing units from 5 percent to 2 percent until December 31, 2020, to boost the stagnant real estate market, hit doubly hard by the Covid pandemic.
The stamp duty applicable from January 1, 2021, until March 31, 2021, was 3 percent. On the same day, the Maharashtra government said that it would not extend the stamp duty waiver on property registrations and reverted to the earlier Ready Reckoner rates of 5 percent for the financial year 2021-22.
Other luxury deals in Mumbai
In September 2022, IGE India Pvt. Ltd bought two luxury apartments overlooking the sea, spread across an area of 16,000 sq ft, in Mumbai’s posh real estate project Oberoi Three Sixty West for Rs 151 crore, documents accessed by CREMatrix showed.
The buyer bought the two flats located on the 58th and 59th floors, from Oasis Realty, a subsidiary of Oberoi Realty.
The agreement value of each apartment was Rs 75.50 crore and the area measured 8,036 sq. ft. The property was registered on September 8, 2022, while the stamp duty paid was Rs 4.53 crore.
The family of the chairman and managing director of Symphony Limited, Achal Bakeri, bought a luxury apartment in Mumbai for Rs 72.85 crore. The property was registered on September 27. The Achal Bakeri Family Trust and Achal Anil Bakeri, represented by Rupa Achal Bakeri, bought the apartment.
Siddharth Jain, director of INOX Leisure, bought a quadruplex flat in Worli, one of Mumbai’s upscale areas, for Rs 144 crore in 2022.
The unit was an amalgamation of flats on the 42nd, 43rd, 44th, and 46th floors in Raheja Legend on Dr Annie Besant road, documents showed. The seller was Ashish S Raheja of Raheja Universal, the documents said. In 2022, the promoters of Mumbai-based K Raheja Corp bought a Juhu plot along with the house located on it for Rs 265 crore.
In December 2022, Devvrat Developers bought five luxury apartments for Rs 113 crore in Mumbai’s Prabhadevi area. The project was named 25 South and the apartments were spread across a built-up area of 19,922 sq ft.
Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh and his father Jugjeet Singh Bhavnani, through O5O Media Works LLP, bought a quadruplex in Bandra West for Rs 118.9 crore in 2022.
Madhav Prasad Agarwal of Sajjan India Ltd bought a luxury duplex for Rs 153 crore in Oberoi 360 West. It was one of the most expensive apartment deals in 2022.
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