Noida Airport a year away, but regional real estate dreams already soaring

The runway is on track. The passenger terminal is getting the steel structure that will support its roof. The air traffic control tower is now nearly 30 metres tall.

The Noida International Airport is a hub of hectic activity. An army of 7,000-odd workers is hard at work to get it up and running for test flights in the middle of 2024. Commercial operations are scheduled to begin by the end of next year with one runway, one terminal, and an ambition to handle 12 million passen­gers annually. By phase four, the aim is to scale it up to 70 million passengers a year.

The upcoming airport, which aspires to be among India’s biggest, has turned Greater Noida and the Yamuna Express­way stretch into an area of high interest for real estate development. It has also transformed, in some measure, the bus­t­ling, chaotic town of Jewar in Uttar Prad­esh, the site of the airport, which is about 57 km from Noida. Real estate developers and investors, warehouses, hotels and un­iversities have turned their attention to it. As have Bollywood actors and producers.

Flight plan

During the last few years, the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA), the nodal agency for developing the area, has announced schemes pegged on the airport. It has carved out residential, commercial and industrial sectors, and earmarked land patches for an education hub and a film city. One such scheme, launched in August, attracted more than 200,000 applications for 1,184 plots.

Though work on most of these projects is yet to begin, a few high-rise residential colonies by developers known to operate in this area are ready. Among these are ATS, Oasis and the Gaur Group, whose housing projects tower over vast swaths on both sides of the Yamuna Expressway, which connects Noida to Jewar. On the boundary wall of one, a banner announces, “Sold out.” 

The Uttar Pradesh government is looking at the airport at Jewar as the jewel that could light up the area beyond Noida, perhaps even turn it into the next Gurugram. Despite the Yamuna Express­way, which ensures seamless connect­ivity with Noida and Delhi, and big-ticket projects like the Formula 1 Buddh Inter­national Circuit, this stretch never really took off, says Mudassir Zaidi, executive director-North, Knight Frank India. 

The airport at Jewar could change that, provided environmental concerns over the nearby wetland do not stymie the plans. Last week, a petition before the National Green Tribunal sought a stay on the airport’s construction until the Dhan­auri Wetland, home to more than 100 sa­r­us cranes, a species classified as vulner­ab­le, is granted protection. The UP gover­n­ment has four weeks to provide an update.

Meanwhile, signs of the future everyone seems to be putting their money on are evident on the Yamuna Expressway to Jewar, where trucks and tractor trolleys carrying construction material outnumber cars.

Gathering groundspeed

The gate to Jewar carries smiling pictures of the prime minister, the UP chief minis­ter and the local MLA. Shops selling cem­ent, wooden panels and doors begin alm­ost immediately. The crushers churn on non-stop, and brick- and cement-laden trucks navigate the crowded bazaar.

Off the main road, Jewar is a town of narrow, brick-paved lanes and open drains. But signs of a plush future in the form of shopping arcades and a mall have begun to emerge, and scores of real estate offices have sprung up.

“Land rates have gone up expon­entially since 2017,” says Gautam Singh, proprietor of Balaji Real Estate. His office is on the Jewar-Khurja road, which will form a link to the airport. It was in 2017 that the civil aviation ministry granted in-principle approval to the airport.

“People are coming from all over India to buy land — Delhi, Agra, Meerut, Rajasthan, Mumbai,” Singh adds.

Ramvir Singh, whose Shri Banke Bihari Ji Properties is across the road from Balaji’s, says international buyers from Dubai and the United States are also turning up.

Away from YEIDA-approved residential sectors, such as 18 and 20, and commercial land pockets, this is an informal market that facilitates purchase of plots and agricultural land from farmers. “YEIDA does not want people to buy land directly from farmers,” says a real estate agent asking not to be named. “But farmers get a better price if they sell directly to private entities rather than going through YEIDA,” he adds.

Everyone has their version of how much land prices have risen.

Pradeep Singh, site head at Vimaan Vihar residential project at Tappal, 7 km ahead of Jewar, says when their last proj­ect, Royal City, was launched in mid-2021, the asking rate was Rs 8,000 per squ­are yard. “By the time it closed in Decem­ber 2022, the rate had soared to Rs 18,000 per sq yd,” he says. “The plots, measuring 100 to 1,000 sq yd, were sold out.”

At the sub-registrar’s office in Jewar, an official says property registrations have shot up since 2017 in the overall Gautam Buddha Nagar district, which has three sub-divisions: Noida, Jewar and Dadri, with Greater Noida as the ad­ministrative headquarters. Compared to 2017-18, stamp duty revenues nearly dou­bled in 2022-23, fetching the state govern­ment Rs 3,018 crore. In Jewar, of late, regis­trations have slowed down since YEIDA has already acquired the land it needed and the government has stopped chan­ging the land use, the official says. This means agricultural land cannot, for now, be converted for residential or commercial use.

Throttle and thrust

Kush Kapoor, chief executive officer, Ros­eate Hotels & Resorts, is confident the air­port will turn the Noida region into a cor­porate hub larger than Delhi and Guru­gram. The Bird Group-owned Roseate is building a 250-room luxury hotel within walking distance from the terminal.

“Construction will start in December and it will be ready in about three years,” Kapoor says. “It will be a smart hotel, where we will also take care of baggage check-in and collection at the airport 

for the guest.”

Knight Frank’s Zaidi agrees that Noida and Greater Noida have progress­ively taken a march over Gurugram in terms of infrastructure. Law and order situation has improved. But a city develops and thrives due to economic activity, when people start living and working there. Whether the airport is able to draw the kind of economic activity that can create office hubs is a question that remains unanswered.

Many developers, says Santhosh Kumar, vice-chairman, Anarock Group, had already bought large tracts of land when the airport was officially announced. “They will wait and watch its progress and only then launch new projects, because there is ample unsold residential supply in and around the region,” he adds.

The total unsold stock in Noida and Greater Noida collectively has, however, declined by more than 52 per cent between December 2019 and September 2023, Kumar says. Average prices have increased between 26 and 29 per cent.

Meanwhile, over at Sector 20, Yamuna Expressway, the neatly numbered residential plots sold by YEIDA have caught the attention of real estate agents who have deployed their staff there. “Many of the initial investors are looking to resell at seven to eight times the profit,” says Vikash Kumar, an agent. “The ones buying are also doing so only for investment.” Waving at the barren stretch, he adds, “This won’t be liveable for another 10 years.”

That is not stopping the dreams from soaring.