Gr Noida flies high on airport talk

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's announcement that he would pursue with the Cabinet the feasibility of an international airport at Greater Noida has given a boost to the sentiment in the real estate market, say real estate experts.

However, any significant impact will be seen only after real action becomes visible on the ground.

Expect a 5-10 per cent rise in real estate prices in Noida in the next 3-4 months, said Akshaya Kumar, chief executive officer, Colliers Jardine.

This is just an announcement with the actual airport nowhere on the horizon. It will be some 5-7 years before we see anything. Even in Bangalore, the rally in the real estate market started only once actual work started on the airport, he said.

Experts point out to how Noida has seen a lot of action in the real estate market in the last two years. The property market has moved in tandem with the markets in Delhi and Gurgaon and owing to its excellent connectivity, thanks to the Expressway, established infrastructure and fair amount of new residential and commercial development taking place, it has only been lagging the Gurgaon market due to the increased corporate movement there.

In the past two years, Noida has significantly come up on the public radar, said Anshuman Magazine, managing director, south Asia, CB Richard Ellis.

The announcement, he said, will bring more investor confidence in the location. However, real estate prices, having already gone up by 20-40 per cent in the national capital region, are not likely to go up very significantly. There will be definitely increased developer activity in the area, he added.

Even though it is early to conjecture, if the announcements made on the development of the proposed international airport in Noida are implemented, it would certainly start a new trajectory of growth in the entire surrounding catchment of Noida and Greater Noida, said T Chakrabarti, head, research, India Property Research.

While the actual impact of such a development on the real estate markets would depend on the actual investment size and timing, the massive investments required for an international airport should typically induce growth in the regional economy in terms of economic and real estate development and further prop up the scale of new development already taking place in the suburbs, he added.

Industry sources point to how real estate prices in Bahadurgarh, Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's location for the alternative to Indira Gandhi International Airport, had soared after it became public that the CM was vouching for the location. The PM's announcement, however, has seen a drop in realty prices in Bahadurgarh already.