IT park developers grab home sales in Bangalore

Bangalore's builders are facing stiff competition from the big IT park developers. Embassy Group and DivyaSree Developers, better known for their office buildings, together garnered more than 5.5 per cent share of the residential market last fiscal, intensifying top-tier competition in probably the only Indian metro to report double-digit growth in home sales.

Embassy notched up about Rs 1,000 crore, and DivyaSree showed up with Rs 550 crore, in Bangalore's Rs 27,000 crore market for new homes, said real-estate consulting firm Asipac. But these two privately held commercial developers took 20 per cent sales away from the city's top ten home builders - including listed firms like Prestige Estates, Sobha Developers, Puravankara Projects and Brigade Enterprises - that control one-fourth of the new residential units annually.

This is significant as both Embassy and DivyaSree entered the residential market in the last 20 months and operate primarily in the above Rs 1 crore-price bracket. Embassy, which has built over 20 million sqft commercial buildings, sold 340 units with an average unit value of Rs 2.81 crore.

DivyaSree, with a portfolio of more than 10 million sqft of office space, sold 540 units across four projects with an average unit price of Rs 1.04 crore.