Worli is Mumbai’s new billionaires’ playground: JLL

The following is the report by Ashutosh Limaye, National Director – Research, JLL India

Worli is the new luxury destination for Mumbai’s ultra-HNIs and celebrities. Mumbai has for long been home to India’s Who’s Who’ with areas like Nepean Sea Road, Malabar Hill, Walkeshwar, Colaba and Cuffe Parade dominating the addresses for tony old money here. In recent years, however, Worli has signalled its emergence as a prime residential destination, with a number of big-ticket realty transactions taking place here.

With cricketers like Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh and Virat Kohli, Bollywood actors like Abhishek Bachchan and Akshay Kumar, business tycoons like Babasaheb Kalyani (Chairman of Bharat Forge), Rizwan Koita (CEO of CitiusTech), Nandan Nilekani, Narayana Murthy, Ajay Piramal, Siddharth Yog (Chairman of Xander Group) and Anil Agarwal (Sterlite Group) having either invested in or moved to Worli, this precinct has created an independent identity rivalling the traditionally popular prime south-Mumbai residential clusters.

These few big-ticket transactions are indicative to the social status of buyers and the budgets they are allocating towards making investment or even end-use purchases in Worli.

What Lies Beneath

With Mumbai’s city planning having allowed only a few areas access to its sea shore, it is precincts like Worli – which enjoy good access to the sea shore – that have turned into platinum residential addresses, especially with respect to developments overlooking the seaface. Worli has premium residential developments along its bay.

Worli is located in South Mumbai and enjoys easy accessibility to the central and secondary business districts as also BKC, which is Mumbai’s de-facto CBD now. The precinct also has commercial and retail developments in and around it, apart from very good social infrastructure and connectivity.

What has also helped Worli in a big way in recent years is the supply of housing units here vis-à-vis the low supply in other prime areas of South Mumbai due to lack of land parcels and new units primarily entering the market through redevelopment, which is again fairly limited. Worli has, in fact, come to the rescue of South Mumbai’s residential market, which was lagging behind in fulfilling the demand for luxury residential apartments earlier.

The chart below clearly illustrates the supply gap in prime South Mumbai vis-à-vis Worli, which has been filling the gap with a healthy number of high-end residential projects over the past five years.

The release of mill lands and redevelopment opportunities, including Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) projects, have been two major fillips for Worli. As a lot of textile mills and slums get redeveloped into swanky luxury skyscrapers, the average base capital values that Worli commands have gone beyond Rs. 42,000 per sq ft. The typical ticket sizes seen in Worli range between Rs 12.50 crore and Rs 25 crore, depending on a project’s configuration, accessibility, amenities and features.

There have been transactions in the range of INR 40 crore as well. However, it has to be noted here that mesmerising sea views fetch a very high premium over the non-sea view properties in Worli – superlative luxury being a given. Going forward, Worli promises to improve further in terms of connectivity, thanks to the upcoming coastal road and metro rail phase-III, which will pass by neighbourhoods close to this precinct. Also, office space in south-central Mumbai is poised to grow faster as compared to growth of office space in south-Mumbai. All these developments bode well for Worli’s growth in the years to come.