MUMBAI: Swimming pool with jacuzzi. Fully equipped fitness centre. Steam and massage room. Eco-friendly rainwater harvesting system. Security systems like intruder alarms, CCTVs, and video door phones for every flat. Centralised AC with wall units in living and bedroom. Imported marble for the washbasin… And the intoxicating smell of new.
This is not a sales pitch for a Rs 20 crore apartment in a new luxury tower. These are the incentives being dangled before middle and upper-middle-class residents living in old buildings in prime areas of Mumbai that are currently being redeveloped.
Across the city, in gyms and coffee shops, on promenades and public gardens, the talking point nowadays generally revolves around what the builder is offering from transit rents to compensation charges, extra square feet area, multi-crore corpus funds and a slew of luxury facilities. And Mumbai’s A-lister builders are chasing and enticing society members with most jaw-dropping deals.
At Breach Candy in south Mumbai, Miami Apartments, a 13-storey housing society that came up in the 1970s, recently signed a redevelopment deal with the developer, Rustomjee. The building will be torn down and replaced by a 40-storey luxury tower. The first habitable floor in the new building will start from the 11th floor.
Each family, that currently occupies about 2,000 sq ft apartments, will receive a brand-new flat which will have roughly 17% more area. And a further largesse of between Rs 30 lakh and Rs 40 lakh as corpus for every society member. After rehabilitating the families in the new tower, the developer will get to build nine extra floors in the free sale component where current property rates in the area could be over Rs 1 lakh a sq ft.
In Bandra (west) near Mount Mary, Sea Breeze society signed a redevelopment deal with Sunteck Realty. Flat owners here will receive 50% more space in the new building. Sea Breeze currently has 16 members occupying a ground-plus six-floor structure. Members occupy flats whose areas range between 1,500 and 2,000 sq ft (carpet). Corpus for the members is calculated at the rate of Rs 3,000 per sq ft (Rs 45 lakh to Rs 60 lakh) of their existing carpet area.
The new Sea Breeze building is expected to be 16 floors with an estimated 38 flats.
About 3km away, the upmarket residential enclave of Pali Hill, once dotted with bungalows, is now turning into a neighbourhood of high rise buildings.
Daffodils Society, a 40-year-old building having seven floors and 42 flats, is being redeveloped by Prestige Estates. Old flats measured from 886 sq ft to 1,500 sq ft, but members will now move into apartments with 36% extra space. The developer will pay each flat owner Rs 8,000 a sq ft, totalling over Rs 21 crore as corpus fund.
Among the new facilities will be a swimming pool, health club and party hall, and bedrooms furnished with a wardrobe.
“If on account of planning constraints, the carpet area of any new flat allotted to the existing resident is less than the area mentioned in the allocation chart, the developer will compensate the flat owner at the rate of Rs 90,000 a sq ft of the reduced carpet area. If the area is more, then the owner pays the builder at the rate of Rs 81,000 a sq ft,’’ said the Daffodils agreement with the developer.
At the base of Pali Hill, Virgo CHS, where actor Aamir Khan has about half a dozen apartments in a building called Marina, the Wadhwa Group recently won the bid to redevelop the property. The 24 flat owners, currently occupying about 1,100 sq ft homes, will get 60% more space.
Each flat owner will also receive a corpus of about Rs 80 lakh from the builder. The five-storey buildings will be converted into 15-storey towers.
The Wadhwas have also bagged Arteck Society in Bandra (east) where the 54 flat owners residing in the ground-plus three-storey buildings will move into three luxury towers of 24 storeys each. Every family will receive Rs 50 lakh as corpus.
At Narayan Dabholkar Road in Malabar Hill, one of the most prime properties is the 1.5-acre Palmera Housing Society with 47 members. It is learned K Raheja Corp is at an advanced stage of talks with the society.
Experts said the dilution of CRZ norms and the increase in floor space index has opened many prime areas for redevelopment.
