After a decade, DLF gears up to re-enter Chennai's residential space

Realtor lines up plotted development in OMR, premium high-rise in Central Chennai and another project in Sriperumbudur

After a span of ten years, India’s largest real estate developer, DLF Ltd, is gearing up to re-enter Chennai, one of India’s largest markets, through a plotted residential development project in the OMR (Old Mahabalipuram Road) region.

The company is also planning to come up with two other residential projects — a high rise premium project in Central Chennai and another one at Sriperumbadur on the outskirts of the city.

The OMR project is likely to see an investment of around Rs 150 crore, with an expected turnover of around Rs 700 crore. After Gurugram, Delhi and Chandigarh, DLF has its highest land bank of around 12 million square feet in Chennai. The project in OMR will be spread across 85 acres and close to 1,500 plots will be available in the range of Rs 20 lakh to Rs 70 lakh.

The company has so far executed two residential projects in Chennai — Garden City in Semmancheri, followed by Commander’s Court in Egmore — during the early part of the last decade. “We are coming back with the project as there is a lot of activity happening in Chennai’s real estate market in the last nine months. We see real estate demand growing at around 20-25 per cent in 2022-23,” said Aakash Ohri, group executive director and chief business officer, DLF Home Developers. Ohri added that the company is also looking to come up with more projects in cities like Kochi and Goa.

Based on media reports, the state government’s revenue from property registration during the first nine months of the current fiscal is the highest in the last five years at around Rs 9,854 crore, and is likely to touch Rs 15,000 crore by the end of March 2022. It was Rs 6,881 crore during the first nine months of 2020-21. During the third quarter, DLF had raised its sales revenue potential by 17 per cent to Rs 47,000 crore from 35 million square feet of planned new launches of housing and commercial projects in the medium term.

“OMR is the IT and ITes belt of the city. Companies like TCS have more than 100,000 people working on a single campus,” Ohri said, adding, “The plots will vary from 600 square feet to 2,400 sq ft.”

The company’s residential projects in Chennai include DLF Cybercity in Manapakkam and DLF Downtown in Taramani. In October 2020, DLF had inked one of the largest office space deals in India with Standard Chartered global business service leasing 770,000 square feet for the latter’s office building at DLF Downtown.

“The current project will include open spaces, parks, theme parks and other infrastructure in one area, at a gated community. We delayed re-entering the Chennai market as post-Garden City and Commander’s Court, demand fell drastically and residential business nosedived,” says Ohri. But things have changed since. “Now, demand is aggressively picking up across the country in residential space.”