Good morning, the Competition Commission of India just said that pure dispute filings in the real estate sector have reduced progressively since the arrival of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA).
When RERA first gate crashed real estate's free-for-all party, industry watchers were sceptical of its effectiveness in the first few years of operations.
💡 There are two (un)learnings from the RERA efficacy story:
- Experts are not always right when it comes to forecasts
- Good things, sometimes don't take time
So without wasting any. . .
Bridging The Big Gaps
We had earlier written about Gatishakti, a novel initiative by the Govt. Of India that's bringing together sixteen ministries and seven core infrastructure sectors on one tech platform.
Now that the platform is on the verge of becoming self aware being implemented, we thought a revisit was called for.
One Platform, Many Benefits
- Easy connectivity: Since there are many government departmental stores, storage facilities spread across different locations, accessibility becomes a problem. Gatishakti will enable people, services and goods to move more efficiently and easily.
- Save money: The interconnection of railways and roadways with other departments will make the process less annoying and more cost efficient, helping the government save truckloads of money.
- The future is now: Per this report, the Gatishakti program will review policies over the next few years, aiming to bring much needed reforms in the planning and implementation stage right up to the state level. As a result, this will also bring more engagement from the Centre.
Word on the Street?
🎙 The Gatishakti masterplan looks to reduce logistical costs to 8% of GDP from the current 14%, which will help the exchequer save about INR 20 lakh crore – Piyush Goyal, Commerce and Industry Minister.
Plus, better connectivity, seamless inter-departmental coordination, and digital workflows could re-shape the real estate sector overall, feel experts.
New Delhi's Connaught Place In Top Slots
Delhi's Connaught Place has inched up from the 25th rank to the 17th in a year, beating San Francisco with an annual average occupancy cost of USD109/sq. ft., per a recent survey. [USD109 = INR 8,328 approximately]
📌 The global office occupancy costs aren’t very different this time from last year, owing to reduced demand for new offices since the pandemic thing happened.
Toppers?
Hong Kong (Central) and New York (Midtown) jointly shared the top slot in the JLL Premium Office Rent Tracker (PORT) research report.
At USD261/sq. ft. per year occupancy costs, these cities continue to lead the rankings propelled by the banking and finance sectors.
Premium Office Takers Here?
Premium realty markets of Connaught Place and Mumbai BKC are driven largely by banking and financial services firms and this is in line with the global trend.
Struggling Retailer Turns To Its Real Estate Assets
As ecommerce changes consumer behaviour, retailers might abandon real estate, but real estate abandoning retailers? Nada. Impossible.
Context, Please.
Sears, the needles to washing machine departmental store is struggling to find customers. Battered by the growth of e-commerce, the iconic store chain still has one commodity to peddle - it's real estate.
Beginning almost 10 years ago, and speeding up over the past few months, Sears' owners and investors have embarked on the equivalent of a clearance sale, betting on new tenants/buyers for vacant Sears stores, from Santa Monica to New Jersey.
Once A Store Always A...
Sears' stores all over the country can be broadly classified into two kinds.
1️⃣ The windowless boxes connected to shopping malls - these are not too far from their original purpose. They’re being refurbished for new retailers who are taking its place.
2️⃣ The bigger have-it-all properties - developers are installing high-end apartments, cutting-edge classrooms and even labs where classified weapons systems are conceived.
Not A Solo Performance
Sears is not the only retailer struggling with abandoned shopping carts. Other big department stores have filed for bankruptcy protection during the pandemic, including Neiman Marcus, JCPenney and Lord & Taylor.
With the opening of its Chicago store a century ago, Sears began a nationwide push to introduce a brick-and-mortar side to a thriving mail-order business.
😇 Today, with ecommerce's rise, this feels like another 'full circle' tale of change.
Touching The Sun
Squint your eyes please because for the first time since the big-bang, a spacecraft has ‘touched’ the Sun.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there.
Touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system.
One Down, Many More To Go
In 2019, Parker discovered that magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks, are plentiful close to the Sun. But how and where they form remained a mystery.
Halving the distance to the Sun since then, Parker Solar Probe has now passed close enough to identify one place where they originate: the solar surface.
More power to you Parker. (And more responsibility.)
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Inspired by the Parker Solar Probe, we are boldly going where no real estate newsletter has ever gone before. 😎
Stay with us. See you tomorrow. 💚
☕ The Crew@Ginger Chai