Indian Real Estate

Right now, there’s only one way real estate is headed in Goa: northwards. And as land rates make new highs almost daily, local builders too are beginning to feel the heat of big-time entrants from ‘outside’.

Right now, there’s only one way real estate is headed in Goa: northwards. And as land rates make new highs almost daily, local builders too are beginning to feel the heat of big-time entrants from ‘outside’.

“Prices are spiralling not every month, but every fortnight,” says builder Dinar Tarcar who is finding the business “too hot to handle these days.” Were he to buy land at these inflated rates, his Rs 40 crore company could collapse in a crash, he fears.

One of the biggest land deals made here recently surprised even the government. The land auction by its subsidiary Economic Development Corporation (EDC) fetched Rs 90 crore for 18,120 square metres at Panjim’s Patto Plaza.

On the Calangute coast, land stands now at Rs 7,000 to Rs 9,000 a sq metre, depending on beach access. One plot was sold recently for Rs 10,000 per sq metre, said MLA and Sarpanch Agnelo Fernandes. At seaside Dona Paula, equated with Mumbai’s glitzy Malabar Hill, prices range from Rs 10,000 to Rs 22,000 per sq metre. Actor Shah Rukh Khan recently booked his piece of the Goan real estate pie at a manicured development there.

Tarcar who sold seaview apartments here for Rs 12,000 sq metre (built-up) three years ago, says the same flats are being resold for Rs 40,000 per sq metre today. It is the deals made over gracious old Portuguese-style mansions that surprise one almost on a daily basis. One such house at Altinho in Panjim was bought recently by a Goan mineowner for around Rs 7 crore, say builders.