Increase in demand of the office spaces in the country

  By Pallavii Pitale

 Commercial Real Estate Market in India is getting stabilized now.

 An increase in the demand of office spaces has been observed, specially in the National Capital Region( NCR) , Delhi as well as in most metros and other cities in the country in the first quarter of this year. There is an improvement in transaction velocity as well.

 Various banks, financial services and insurance firms and other corporates which had put their expansion plans on the back-burner during the recession, have now initialised the process due to which Occupancy in office spaces has improved. The vacancy level in NCR during first three months of this year stood at 13-14 per cent.

 This has given rise to affordable rentals and flexible lease terms resulting in the enhanced transaction velocity in the second quarter, thereby boosting the demand for such spaces.

 The Cities of Mumbai as well as Bangalore are also experiencing similar phase as various IT firms and financial institutions have started with their expansion plans by  investing in the spaces.

 Big companies like L&T Infotech , Wipro Ltd. and others are planning to invest in huge spaces in a SEZ which is being marketed at Navi Mumbai.

 The trend would either stabilise the rates of rentals for these spaces or there might be a slight fall in the rental values due to over supply of such premises, say the experts.