Flat sizes in City shrinking to make them Affordable Housing
Real estate developers in Ahmedabad are building dwelling units of smaller size to make them affordable. The size of 3 and 4-BHK apartments reduced by around 40% to keep their prices down. The trend of smaller dwelling units started 3-4 years back but now it seems to have become the norm in the city’s construction industry. Builders blame the increasing cost of land and construction for this ‘adjustment’.
Some developers say that the size of the flat also depends on the location and the purchasing power of the target customer group. Generally, the well-developed areas have relatively larger apartments compared to the developing localities.
The adjustment, however, does not appeal to every buyer. Many customers, who want to move to a 3 or 4-BHK flats after having lived in 2-BHK flats for many years, get disappointed when they visit the residential schemes in different parts of the city. The reason is that they find their old 2-BHK apartments more spacious than today’s 3-BHK flats.
“Now developers offer 3 and 4-BHK apartments of 2500 and 1200 square feet area, respectively,” said Rajesh Vaswani, executive director, Venus Group of Companies.Builders blame increasing land and construction costs for the reduced size of dwelling units. You have to make it affordable for the target audience, said Vaswani.“The unit cost will rise steeply if you build a large flat in a less developed area. Such a flat will find few buyers in a developing locality,” he said.
One such customer, Arvind Joshi, visited some of the residential schemes in New Ranip locality as he wanted to move to a bigger flat from his 2-BHK apartment in Akhbarnagar. Joshi found the room size in the new residential schemes to be much smaller than that of the apartment he currently lives in.
“I hardly came across any houses that were bigger than the house I live in. They may have an extra room but they gave a congested feeling,” he said. Earlier, the area of a 4-BHK flat used to be around 3500-4000 square feet and 3-BHK apartments were around 2500-2700 square feet in size.
Dinesh Patel of Deep Builders said that a developer can offer a 2300 sq ft-flat in Prahladnagar but he will offer a similar flat in Ranip of only 1800 sq ft. The reason for this is that in developed areas, people are ready to pay higher prices, Patel said.
Buyers, however, have their own reasons for wanting to move to 3 or 4-BHK apartments even if their total size is smaller than the houses they live in. More rooms can accommodate a growing family more easily and provide family members greater privacy.
DNA India
Affordable Housing, affordable housing project, Ahmedabad, Flat sizes in city shrinking, Real estate developers in Ahmedabad
