_Kolkata: Western suburbs emerging as an affordable housing frontier
Kolkata’s development is beginning to see a unique challenge, due to its narrow East-West dimension. The city’s real estate development is concentrated before the Hooghly river in the West to Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in the East. The northern and southern peripheries provided scope for real estate expansion, but the Western micro-markets largely remained barren of large-scale real estate activity.
The Hooghly district accounts for 39% of Kolkata Metropolitan Area’s total population* yet primary residential development in this belt lags far behind other areas. Locations in Hooghly district such as Serampore, Rishra, Uttarpara and around the once operational Hind Motor factory have a large population base comprising of small business owners, blue collared workers and white collared professionals working in the service sector who commute to Salt Lake or New Town, but all these locations lack modern and affordable housing products targeting this population group.
Textile companies in Serampore hold a lot of land, which have caught the fancy of real estate developers. Owing to affordable land prices and seamless public transport connectivity to Kolkata’s prime employment hubs via the eastern line of Kolkata Suburban Railway, private real estate developers have now started taking notice of the untapped potential of the western suburbs for development of mass affordable housing stock which mainly comprises of first-time home buyers.
In the past year, many developers launched housing projects with ticket sizes ranging from INR 1.8 - 5.0 million ticket size categories across configurations. Some offer micro units for as low as INR 0.5 million. Developers such as Alcove Realty, Eden Realty and Shriram Properties have launched projects comprising large satellite projects with atleast 1,000 units each in the first phase.
The prolonged downturn in residential sales has proven to be a blessing in disguise for development of the Western suburbs and it is finally receiving a lot of attention from real estate developers who are eyeing this belt to diversify risk. With large-scale township projects promising open spaces and community living for the lower and mid-segment categories, the skyline beyond Hooghly is set to change in the coming years.
Not only will such projects slowly provide a makeover to the western belt, but also help cater to the inherent demand that these suburbs possess, providing a window to Kolkata’s developers for incremental cash flows. With cost of marketing shooting up to lure buyers, developers who have started understanding the importance of affordable housing’s volume play and creating efficiently designed compact units to maximize value of each sq. foot occupied for the end-users, will stand to stay in the game for the long-term.
With its large population base as a ready target segment and availability of public transport to employment hubs, Kolkata’s western suburbs have arrived on Kolkata’s real estate map.
*As per 2011 Census