Lockdown offers unlock residential sales; Commercial RE witness rental restructuring

On commercial space rentals developers should take case to case scenario, says  Supriya Chatterjee, Senior Director – Leasing Services, Cushman & Wakefield. Speaking at Realty Webseries, a Realty & More and ICCPL initiative, Supriya said developers should be more compassionate, at least for a certain period of time, specifically to industries which are witnessing hardship more than others. “Most of us believe that this is a short term scenario and that in the long term the commercial real estate is here to stay”, added Supriya.

Speaking at the Webinar, Salil Kumar, Director, Assotech Realty agreed that occupiers are pressing for rental waivers right now and are pressing for rental waivers for some time, especially in markets where the rentals are high. Kumar also added that there has to be a trend of discounts, at least for the time being. “Also an alternative is emerging, which is deferment of rents or some part of the rents be deferred  for some time”, added Kumar.

Khair Ull Nissa Shah, ED, WTC said that they haven’t seen any rent restructuring demands from their tenants. “But we do see that some of the industries and some of the developers are facing the situation where some clients are coming to them and asking for restructuring”, said Khair.

Ajay Rakheja, National Head – Commercial Real Estate – 360 Realtors gave a different perpective on the rental situation. Rakheja said that the individual landlords are able to manage the so-called interim or short term discounting factors. “But the large developers who have taken the bank loans or they have mortgaged their assets on rental discounting, are being not able to put their feet down to hold their current rentals that’s more evolving right now and the individual owners are trying to restructure it”, added Rakheja.

Also present at Webinar was Abhi Batra, Director, Buniyad Group. Batra said earlier the trend was that three or four locations would be merged together and be in a cluster in one particular space. “That has started to go back to traditional way and again one has started looking at multiple offices”, said Batra.

Amrendra Shukla, National Head, Sales, OLX India said that most of the companies are now cautious considering that Covid will exist for another 6-7 months. “So most of the companies are trying to find out the pieces which can be pushed under working remotely and then there are certain structures which are required to be in office”, added Shukla.

Kapil Kapur, Director, Strategy, Sales & BD, Bullmen Realty said marketing cost per lead in the commercial segment has come down drastically. “We used to spend so much on cost per lead which has come down. We see lot of boom from the residential and commercial sector also”, said Kapur.

Speaking on the residential sales, Amit Raheja, CMD, Wealth Clinic said that this month has proved to be amazing in terms of sales of housing units. “Thanks to the developers that they came up with lockdown offers and payment plans we never expected. We never expected a builder can give a plan of and that has worked wonders”, said Raheja.