JLL India Launches Residential Brokerage Business to Tap into India’s Growing Housing Sector

Mumbai, Jan 23, 2018: JLL, India’s leading real estate professional services firm, today announced the launch of its Residential Brokerage Business that will offer a bouquet of technology-enabled advisory and transaction services to home buyers and developers. Significantly boosting and complementing the Firm’s extensive real estate capabilities, this bespoke business will be led by industry veteran Siva Krishnan who brings over 2 decades of experience and has successfully advised and managed a variety of residential real estate investments in India. With the estimated revenue for FY 2018-19 expected to be around INR 4,000 crore, JLL has been growing exponentially in India for the past 20 years.

To meet our ambitious plans to scale up JLL’s Residential Brokerage Business, we plan to ramp up the team rapidly to around 100 highly-trained professionals across Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai. As part of its range of offerings, JLL will now offer transaction services for new and resale residences in the mid to luxury range and will also undertake exclusive project marketing mandates. JLL enjoys strong relationships with India’s leading developers and institutional investors at every stage of the property life-cycle across various asset classes. Backed with decades of expertise, be it in acquiring land, consulting, facilitating financial closures, enabling development or managing assets, the Firm in parallel, has also developed a profound understanding of the residential sector. With the growth and evolution of the residential sector in the last few years, there is strong demand from developers and investors for marketing support as well as professional and transparent advice. With the right mix of talent and top-of-line solutions backed by market intelligence, real-time data and a technology led platform, JLL is uniquely positioned to cater to the diverse needs of our valued clients.

“At JLL, there has always been a conscious effort to set new paradigms and stay ahead of the curve. We want to be a very agile, dynamic and forward-thinking Firm. The support of a stellar research team armed with superlative market intelligence and over 10 years of residential data analytics forms the backbone of successful strategy execution for JLL. With the launch of our Residential Brokerage arm, we aim to drive value and insight-driven decision-making for clients. We have observed commercial real estate to be the harbinger of residential development in most cities and this phenomenon is also a perfect analogy for JLL India’s growth story. Our comprehensive and diverse experience across various asset classes and markets coupled with continued confidence shown by the developer and investor community in our capabilities has been instrumental in the launch of our residential brokerage business in 2019,” said Ramesh Nair, CEO and Country Head, JLL India.

He further added, “JLL has been at the forefront of technology developments and we will continue to invest in a tech-enabled platform to create a differentiated experience for our residential clients and developers. In an environment where home buyers expect complete transparency and a trustworthy advisor to help make the right decisions, we believe the timing and juncture couldn’t have been more appropriate for us to introduce our residential services. Buying a home is one of the most important decisions for an Indian family and we want to be their partner of choice in this journey. Overall, it also helps us complete the entire bouquet of service offerings from JLL.”

Siva Krishnan, Managing Director – Residential Business, said “JLL has an established presence in the residential space over the past 20 years. Through various business lines, we have catered to all kinds of requirements from developers, corporates and investors. From our past experience, we are aware that there is never a one-size-fits all in residential segment as the needs and requirements of every customer and developer is unique. With the launch of the Residential Brokerage Services, we plan to offer bespoke services to both the demand and supply side.”

With the implementation of landmark reforms such as RERA, Demonetisation and GST, a renewed growth momentum is being witnessed in the residential segment. Though there was teething trouble initially, developers and home buyers have both navigated their way to accommodate the long term positive impacts expected. The proposed GST revision for under-construction properties could bring in much needed respite for the residential sector and help boost the overall economy.

With the dust over key policy reforms settling, developers are now focusing on meeting delivery timelines for existing residential projects. According to JLL’s latest report titled ‘India’s Resurgent Residential Sector – A Study of Top Seven Markets’ that was released at the event today, sales and launches in 2018 increased year-on-year by 42% and 53% respectively compared to 2017 across Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. In absolute terms, new launches across these seven cities touched 160,000 units. Going ahead, new unit launches are expected to remain modest as developers realign their product mix to suit market demand in the post reform regime.

“Our research shows that there has been aresurgence in sales with nearly 136,500 units being sold in the seven key markets during 2018 compared to 96,400 units sold in 2017. However, sales are yet to match the levels achieved in 2014 which saw an offtake of more than 165,000 units. This clearly reflects the innate potential of the market to grow at a much higher rate in the coming years. The report also reveals that a significant 39% of launches in 2018 were in the lower ticket size bracket of up to INR 50 lakh, reflecting strong demand for affordable and mid-market housing. Bengaluru, Pune and Kolkata witnessed nearly two-third of the launches in this bracket,” said Samantak Das, Chief Economist and Head of Research & REIS, JLL India.

Going ahead, the outlook for residential sector in 2019 remains positive despite a likely slowdown in launches amidst developers facing tight liquidity conditions. As a fallout of the regulatory changes and the NBFC liquidity crisis, trends such as consolidation of the market and increase in joint development agreements that are already evident in the market are likely to continue in 2019 as well.