Monday, November 14, 2005

Apartments and Houses in Bangalore

House hunting is as much fun as repeated visits to the dentist. You try and make the best of things however. After a hopefully successful search, you can sit back and think of all the insights you may have gained. Whether or not that insight is applicable or practical is quite another matter.

Adarsh Palm Meadows is one of the best I have seen so far. Well designed and laid out, the gated community is spread over 80 acres, and has some 550 villas and row houses, on plot areas ranging from a couple of thousand sq feet to 10,000 sq ft. Of course, it is also out of reach of most people, with prices upwards of a million dollars - five crores.

I am told that when this project, perhaps in 2000 or even earlier, villas could be had for sixty lakhs or so.  Few however had imagined that the Whitefield area would see so much real-estate development, with residential, commercial, and office space coming up at such a frenetic, and unplanned, pace.


A model apartment at Mantri Rhythm. The original project never took off because of land acquisition problems. Mantri refunded the initial deposit money to the people in the end. They relaunched the project after waiting for some time, and at more than twice the rates.


With the explosion in housing in Bangalore, a lot of assembled kitchen and woodwork shops have sprung up. Ranging from the reasonably priced to the exorbitant ones.


Mantri Elite on Bannerghatta Road. Purva Heights is right opposite this, on the other side of the road. Mantri Elite was launched sometime in 2003, at rates starting at Rs 1600 per square foot.


Mantri Sarovar, opposite the Agara lake. The lake itself has been under renovation for a couple of years now. With the current govt's attitude towards development, the fate of the lake is very much hangs in the balance. As has been the case over the last 50 years or so, half the lakes in Bangalore have dried up as a result of encroachment. They have been allowed to dry up, and the land has then been encroached upon by  builders who pay off politicians and bureaucrats.


Casa Ansal, on Bannerghatta Road, opposite Shopper's Stop. This is perhaps one of the first apartment complexes on Bannerghatta Road.


Prestige St John's Woods. The apartment complex itself is spacious with lots of open, green spaces. The surrounding environs is a mix of slums and junkyards. The going rate is believed to be in the vicinity of Rs 3500/sq ft. Which means a 2000 sq ft apt will cost you 70 lakh rupees, or more.


Brigade Millennium. The approach road, if you can call it that, is a drive through hell. The hope was that the road would be widened and made motorable. That was a few years back. Not happened yet, nor are there any hopes of that happening any time soon.


Purva Elita, a joint venture between Purva and Keppel of Singapore. Situated opposite Brigade Millenium, this project overlooks a lake (at least a bed of algae ridden water).
© 2005, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved. Reposted to this blog, May 2013.