New Project - Ahmedabad - DBS

We met with DBS Housing on Friday. This is a new company - formed by a team of professionals who are passionate about creating homes for lower income families. Their approach is bottom up - in that their plan for a township in Ahmedabad (near Vatva) is based on views from the community - and after a lot of research on needs of expected end users. In fact, they have a tie up with Saath (http://www.saath.org/saath/index.php) which works very closely with communities in Ahmedabad slums to provide integrated solutions in health, education, basic infrastructure, job training etc - and who will spread the word on this project. This is exciting for us as it will probably ensure that buyers on the project will be mostly end users from our target segment - lower income families from the informal sector.
The project opens on May 2 - about 1400 flats (1 RK, 1 BHK and 2 BHK) on offer - price range starting 3, 5, 7 lakhs in each category. It has been conditionally approved by MHFC - final approval will be after receipt of all planning permissions. Our LOs will be on site for the opening to take details of prospective buyers.
More details on DBS and the project on their website - link below:
http://www.dbsaffordablehomes.com/index_files/Page304.htm

Samruddhi - Poddar Developers - update

There has been a good response for the project in that 600 bookings already made - within a month of launch. However, of this, most bookings are for the 1 BHK category (which was priced at Rs 4.5 lakhs) and less for the 1 RK (priced at Rs 3.5 lakhs). In fact, the surplus bookings for the 1 BHK category have meant that (a) it will be closed quite soon as it seems that only Phase IV flats left in this category and (b) the builder has raised prices to between Rs 4.65 and 4.95 lakhs, depending on the floor. For the moment though, the 1 RK prices have been retained at Rs 3.5 lakhs and the builder has also set up a sample flat at site for viewing in order to generate interest (until now only the 1 BHK sample flat was ready). We still do not have a clear idea on the proportion of investors to end users but MHFC is certainly trying to spread the word among the latter segment so that they come forward to book a flat in what is probably a reasonably affordable project, even for those earning between Rs 8-10,000 Rs per month (the EMI on a Rs 2.8 lakh loan - after the 20% client own contribution of Rs 70,000 - will be approx Rs 3,700 over 15 years).