Repackaging is the new mantra when it comes to residential real estate. Fighting a glut, developers are re-christening projects, tweaking specifications and re-positioning them in an effort to find new takers, continuing the trend that was triggered during the slowdown of 2008-09.
Sample this: Eldeco, which launched luxury apartments and penthouses on the Noida Expressway named Olympia, re-branded the second phase and launched Utopia, a group housing project. The low demand for luxury houses in wake of the slowdown was the trigger?for several other projects as well.
Supertech, which launched luxury towers Emerald Court on the Noida Expressway with unit price starting at R1 crore, re-launched its second phase last month as Apex Tower, pricing it around R36 lakh.
Technopolis at Baner, Pune, by Achalare and Rachana Associates was relaunched in August last year, re-christened as ?My World?. In the same vein, Island at Wakad, Pune, by Om Developers was relaunched as Golden Palms.
And, it?s not only smaller players that are resorting to this strategy; several big names are also doing it. Unitech?s Grande, which was launched as an ultra-luxury residential project in Noida, was re-launched as Unitech Golf & Country Club (UGCC) late last year. Similarly, Nitesh Estates revamped the second phase of its luxury Forest Hills project in the Whitefield suburb of Bangalore, renaming it Flushing Meadows last year, bringing the price down to R20-30 lakh. In another instance, an Ansal project, which was supposed to be an out-and-out residential project, was turned into a mix of residential and commercial.
Experts point out that the idea is to get the price right to stimulate demand. ?When exorbitantly priced projects don?t sell, they are relaunched or tweaked to rationalise prices. Also, the accessories, expensive furnishings, quality of the fittings, etc, are changed to bring the cost down.
That?s how the positioning of the project also changes,? says Sachin Sandhir, MD, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
However, developers cite reasons other than low demand for repackaging.
Explaining their stance, Unitech Group?s VP (marketing) Vikram Datta says, ?The only change is the re-branding of Grande to Unitech Golf & Country Club. There is no change in our proposition or the project offerings and it has not been re-positioned. It continues to be a luxury project; though we have highlighted the signature golf course around which the towers will be built. We wanted to give a sense of the multitude offerings and amenities at UGCC, hence the broader name. We commissioned eminent branding experts?Ray and Keshavan?to undertake the re-branding and logo design exercise, which has now been implemented.? However, real estate brokers point out that the slowdown gave way to the trend and now with unsold inventory piling up in the residential sector, the tweaking continues. ?Many developers go for re-composition of the project portfolio. Not only are amenities done away with, the sizes are reduced too. So a three-bedroom flat becomes two-bedroom and so on,? says Vineet Singh, business head, 99Acres, an online real estate company from the stable of Naukri.com. In many cases, when the square feet size is reduced and units are made cheaper, broker margins also get rationalised in the process. Another analyst points out that many developers are not sure about the positioning of the project, and, therefore, they change the brand name and other specifications later.
However, the debate continues, with developers refusing to concede the point. As a senior official of a Delhi-based real estate company says, ?It?s not essentially re-branding; several times the phase two of a project is planned to be different from the very start.?