India property in takeoff mode

A decade ago, Gurgaon on the outskirts of the Indian capital was little more than scrubland and a few isolated housing developments. Today it is a sprawling concrete jungle home to a slew of multinational companies and a symbol of India's real estate boom which is drawing a flood of foreign and domestic money.
While the west is in the grip of a sub-prime credit crisis, investors are still flocking to India which experts say is one of the last few nations where there is primary demand for real estate rather than individuals trading up.
"In the west, the world is fully built up," Ashwin Ramesh, partner at Mumbai's Primary Real Estate Advisors which tracks domestic property price movements, told AFP.
"In India, demand still has to be met," he said. Last week, Donald Trump Junior, son of the flamboyant US real estate billionaire, turned up on a scouting mission for his father, declaring: "Now is the time to come to India."
Trump followed in the footsteps of other investors including private equity giant Blackstone, brokerage Goldman Sachs, US-based General Electric and New York real estate investment fund Trinity Capital LLC which have announced plans totalling billions of dollars to invest in Indian property.
Emaar Properties, the world's largest listed real estate developer, has announced a more than 12 billion dollar investment with India's MGF Developments. Nakheel Group has signed a 20 billion dollar deal to develop townships and DAMAC Holdings plans to invest three to five billion dollars.
"The number of upper middle class and rich populations are growing in India and with it the demand for quality housing," DAMAC chairman Hussain Sajwani told India's Business Standard. "We will tap this potential."
According to the Indian government's habitat policy, about 800 billion to 900 billion dollars in investment is required to overcome the country's housing shortage and achieve the target of everybody having a home of their own.
But it is not only foreigners who are pumping in money into the country of 1.1 billion people. Top of the list of Indian property magnates is developer K.P. Singh who made a far-sighted bet decades ago that real estate would eventually soar. In the 1970s, he bought 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) on the far reaches of New Delhi that spawned Gurgaon, host to such corporate heavyweights as Motorola and Dell.